Hi Bernard and all V/W-OFDM fans, some more related articles I came across. Some of the info in these seems a bit confused, but it appears TI is in both camps. There are 3 articles to follow, and much of it is redundant. Often times, the writers of these take their phone interviews with the participants in the wrong context, and mis-state what was actually said. There may be a bit of that here, but judge for yourself:
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Cisco enlists wireless-broadband support.
Electronic Buyers' News, Nov 1, 1999 p6
LaPedus, Mark; Dunn, Darrell
Cisco Systems Inc. has drafted Broadcom Corp., Texas Instruments Inc., and several other companies to develop system- and chip-level products based on a new wireless-broadband technology.
Cisco's version of the technology, called vector orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (VOFDM), enables carriers to deliver Internet, e-mail, and other broadband services over a wireless network at upstream and downstream speeds of up to 40 Mbits/s. The technology, slated to be deployed by MCI Worldcom, Sprint, and other major carriers in the next few months, promises to deliver two-way broadband services at competitive rates over a 30-mile radius to both homes and businesses.
Cisco's is not the only effort in this emerging wireless-broadband arena. Wi-LAN Inc., Calgary, Alberta, recently unveiled a VOFDM-based system for broadband and digital cellular applications. Key chip suppliers for Wi-LAN's technology include Philips Semiconductors and TI.
Wireless broadband is one of three major technologies vying for dominance in the digital-based Internet-access market. The others, cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL), promise to deliver high-speed Internet access over existing cable and phone lines, respectively.
Right now, there is no clear-cut winner, but the potential for each is great. The worldwide market for wireless-broadband services is projected to grow from 100,000 subscribers in 1998 to 4 million by 2004, according to Allied Business Intelligence Inc., Oyster Bay, N.Y.
Each technology should find some degree of success, said Gregg Lowe, vice president of the ASIC Group at Dallas-based TI, which builds chips for both cable-modem and DSL applications.
"We're obviously very enthused about broadband overall,'' Lowe said. "ADSL and cable are taking off. [Wireless-broadband] technology is aimed at a different segment of the marketplace, primarily for business-to-business applications and highly congested areas.''
Hoping to leverage its wireless-broadband expertise for Cisco and other major OEMs, TI will develop merchant chips for this technology based on its patented DSP technology. "Basically, our DSPs [will be] used as the backbone,'' he said.
TI will provide more details about its chip plans within the month.
Broadcom's efforts in this area come in the form of an alliance with Cisco, under which the two companies will co-develop a wireless-modem chip. The chip will combine a media-access controller and a physical-layer IC on one device. Broadcom and Cisco will also develop open standards for the chip technology.
Broadcom will sell the chips to San Jose-based Cisco and other OEMs. Dubbed the BCM2200, this chip will begin shipping in the first half of 2000, said Tim Lindenfelser, vice president of marketing at the Irvine, Calif., company.
The move represents Broadcom's entry into the wireless-chip business, according to Lindenfelser. Broadcom, the world's largest supplier of cable-modem chips, also supports a DSL technology called very-high-bit-rate DSL, which provides high-speed broadband services over a fiber-optic network.
"We think [wireless broadband] is also promising,'' Lindenfelser said. "This market will grow as consumers are offered new alternatives to existing broadband delivery methods.''
Other companies involved in Cisco's VOFDM initiative include Bechtel Telecommunications, Electronic Data Systems, KPMG, LCC International, Motor-ola, Pace Micro Technology, Samsung Electronics, and Toshiba.
Copyright [copyright] 1999 CMP Media Inc.
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Cisco cuts fresh path to broadband wireless.
Electronic Engineering Times, Nov 1, 1999 p1
Wirbel, Loring
SAN JOSE, CALIF. - Broadband wireless got a shot in the arm last week when router king Cisco Systems Inc. brokered a broad coalition of companies behind a coding scheme that has the potential to lower costs of the technology into the realm of mass-market appeal. Cisco rounded up 10 backers to promote vector orthogonal frequency-division multiplex-ing (VOFDM). The technology promises to reduce the costs of 30-Mbit/second wireless connections to less than $50-within striking distance of cable modems and digital subscriber lines.
"Initially, we thought wireless access might serve limited markets, but with the potential to drive costs of the electronics below $50 for the customer premises, the companies involved in VOFDM could change the equation," said Gregg Lowe, vice president of worldwide ASICs at Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas), which will make ASICs and DSPs using VOFDM.
But analysts were cautious about whether VOFDM will be the slam-dunk Cisco and its partners see for wireless services based on Metropolitan Multipoint Distribution Service networks operating at 2.5 and 5 GHz. "Given the false starts many carriers have had in introducing MMDS, it's hard to see the infrastructure taking off, even with the availability of lower-cost electronics based on this new technology," said Gary Arlen, telecommunications analyst with Wideband Inc. (Bethesda, Md.).
Nevertheless, Cisco has contracted with Broadcom Corp. (Irvine, Calif.) to develop a media-access control (MAC) device for VOFDM. The BCM2200 could be used in customer-premises modems for broadband wireless Internet access.
Cisco and its system partners also will work with TI on DSP and ASIC solutions, both for customer premises modems and for headends multiplexing many VOFDM subscriber services. Other partners include Bechtel Telecommunications, EDS, KPMG Consulting, LCC International, Motorola, Pace Micro Technology, Samsung and Toshiba.
Microwave MMDS services were touted in the early 1990s as a one-way broadcast method, often dubbed "wireless cable." The scheme, heralded for its non-line-of sight transmission, which simplifies deployment, saw only limited urban success in 2.5- and 5-GHz frequency bands. Trade groups like the Wireless Cable Association have promoted using MMDS as a two-way packet service for Internet access, but this has remained a dream.
Steve Smith, director of marketing for broadband wireless at Cisco, and Tim Lindenfelser, Broadcom's vice president of marketing, cited the same business events in 1998 as spurring an effort to create a multivendor coalition around VOFDM: the parallel moves by MCI WorldCom and Sprint to buy up moribund "wireless cable" MMDS operations. Sprint bought American Telecasting Inc., while MCI WorldCom acquired CAI Wireless Inc. When MCI WorldCom offered to acquire Sprint in early October, the effort to promote VOFDM for consumer markets moved into high gear.
"Suddenly you had a unified footprint from national carriers, and MMDS looked a lot more viable," Lindenfelser said.
The coalition still is hammering out its standards strategy. Smith said that part of the effort involves putting chip-level interfaces in place via informal channels, but if a standards effort is deemed important, the coalition likely will turn to the IEEE's new 802.16 group for broadband wireless (see Jan. 25, page 1). The group may also work with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute's Broadband Radio Networks committee, but the coalition views the MMDS-oriented Wireless Communications Association as primarily a Washington lobbying body.
Cisco's strategy in DSL and cable modems is to be involved in headend and central office equipment such as routers and DSL access multiplexers, but to take the plunge into customer premises modems for broadband services only where absolutely necessary. This is why Cisco turned to Broadcom for a standard modem, implementing MAC and physical-layer parts of VOFDM in a single chip. Cisco has urged Broadcom to sell the BCM2200 into merchant markets.
Broadcom's Lindenfelser said the new chip, which will integrate dual OFDM receivers, can use significant portions of the company's quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) cable modem chip set. It will include many features from the new Docsis 1.1 cable modem spec, he said, including packet prioritization to support low-latency voice, in-line encryption and decryption using the Data Encryption Standard, and support for symmetric services.
The VOFDM codes, which Cisco acquired from Clarity Wireless Inc., are similar in some senses to the QAM cod-ing used in cable modems. Wireless modems must enforce tight power control to combat rain and foliage fade, using special system-ID circuitry in the transceiver. Although implementation is slightly more complex, Broadcom should be able to drive the modem chips to near price parity with cable modem MACs, Lindenfelser said.
Broadcom will limit its participation to baseband and physical-layer transceiver functions, and will not move into RF/IF blocks. Although VOFDM can be used in many frequency bands, Lindenfelser predicted that near-term systems will be dominated by 2.5-GHz implementations, with 5-GHz systems coming later.
The involvement at TI stemmed from Clarity's use of TMS320C6x family members in banks of DSPs in the initial VOFDM headends. Lowe said that TI will continue to supply standalone DSPs to all the players in VOFDM headend equipment. But the real excitement for the company, he said, will be in developing a low-cost customer premises solution combining DSP cores, TI's ASIC backplane and MAC technology gained through the acquisition of Libit Signal Processing Inc. (Tel Aviv), the specialist in cable modem MACs. The fact that Libit's intellectual property can be used in cable, DSL and wireless markets, Lowe said, indicates the degree of design reuse that can be accomplished in different broadband segments.
While VOFDM makes the most sense in frequency bands between 2 and 15 GHz, Cisco executives said the new initiative does not mean the company is cooling its joint investment with Motorola Inc. in Local Multipoint Distribution Service networks, originally developed by TI and Bosch. The 28-GHz LMDS is a millimeter-wave cousin to MMDS.
Cisco's Smith said that LMDS networks may prove more appropriate for some metropolitan business services. But using VOFDM in simpler MMDS networks could entail a larger potential market for the lower-frequency services, he said.
OFDM is a modulation scheme that allows a frequency band to carry multiple channels, usually with some overlap in channel assignment to improve capacity. Interest in variants of OFDM coding have pulled in large crowds at IEEE conferences in the last six months.
Coherent OFDM has been used in European digital video broadcast applications, coded OFDM is being studied for MMDS and LMDS applications, and in late June Wi-LAN Inc. (Calgary, Alberta) launched a program for using its wideband OFDM in wireless local loops (see June 27, page 1).
Cisco's Smith said that a key advantage of vector OFDM is its support of directional sectorizing and antenna spatial diversity, leading to much lower costs in antenna infrastructure deployment. The vector coding makes it easier to synchronize on OFDM bursts. Synchronization can be important in always-on consumer broadband systems, where end users may be away from a PC terminal for hours on end, and then come back expecting instant access at full multimegabit rates.
In an LMDS system, this can prove difficult, Smith said, while in a VOFDM MMDS system, synchronization should be almost instantaneous.
"This also provides a solution for those areas of dense foliage, which have always been problematic in traditional LMDS, because you can deploy low-cost repeaters in a VOFDM system," Smith said. To date, the coalition has not approached repeater manufacturers, though Smith said that could be the next step for expanding the base of VOFDM support.
Patent debate
One potential hurdle is patent overlap between the Cisco/Clarity VOFDM work and Wi-LAN's W-OFDM. Wi-LAN has been pursuing its patent rights fairly aggressively. Two weeks ago, the Canadian company notified the International Telecommunication Union that all current third-generation (3G) cellular proposals for using wideband CDMA will likely infringe on Wi-LAN patents. Wi-LAN proposed licensing one of its patents for all 3G implementers.
"We are a baby Qualcomm, with all that implies about seeking fair use," said Hatim Zaghloul, chairman of Wi-LAN. He was referring to CDMA powerhouse Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego), which does a brisk business in licensing.
Zaghloul termed the Cisco announcement vindication for OFDM coding and good news for all in broadband wireless. On a first-pass analysis of the VOFDM work, Zaghloul said he believed any OFDM method using multichannel modulation methods similar to ADSL would overlap with Wi-LAN patents. It is also possible that the VOFDM work may be similar to the Blast technology Lucent Technologies Inc. introduced last year, he added. Many of the VOFDM partners already have approached Wi-LAN to talk about OFDM coding issues, Zaghloul said.
But Smith of Cisco expressed little concern over patent interference with Wi-LAN. Clarity had 30 patents awarded and more than 1,000 claims, Smith said, whereas in his view Wi-LAN has only one patent that appears to be relevant to VOFDM.
Copyright [copyright] 1999 CMP Media Inc.
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Cisco, 10 others in wireless 'Net push.
(Cisco Systems promotes the Vector Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing standard for wireless networks)
Network World, Nov 1, 1999 pNA
Weil, Nancy
Cisco and 10 other vendors have formed a group to push for open standards for broadband wireless Internet services.
The wireless 'Net initiative will focus on standardization of media access control (MAC) and Vector Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VOFDM) physical layer technologies, which will allow wireless products from multiple vendors to interoperate, Cisco says. Cisco acquired VOFDM last year when it bought Clarity Wireless.
"Clearly, we want the technology to be adopted," says Steve Smith, director of marketing for broadband and wireless at Cisco, adding that the company isn't pushing VOFDM to make money but because "we think it's superior. We're not getting royalties from the technology ... We're not doing this to make money with the technology. We're doing it to get this market standardized and going."
VOFDM technologies enable broadband wireless users to have high-speed Internet use as well as frame relay, packet local and long-distance telephony service and virtual private network access. The new technology permits two-way data, voice and video wireless communications for homes and businesses.
Cisco expects to release VOFDM-based hardware and software within the next couple of months, Smith says. Products from other companies involved in the initiative are likely to be out next year.
The coalition came about after Cisco consistently heard from corporate customers, including Sprint and MCI WorldCom, that they need low-cost multiple equipment sources with hardware and software that will interoperate in order to boost high-speed wireless services. Low-cost and interoperability needs kept bringing the discussions back to the issue of standards, Smith says.
Companies joining Cisco in the initiative are Motorola, Broadcom, Texas Instruments, Pace Micro Technology, Toshiba, Bechtel Telecommunications, Samsung Electronics, Electronic Data Systems, LCC International and KPMG Consulting International.
Other vendors are welcome to join the initiative, Smith says. The initiative does not yet have a Web site, but the coalition members are discussing launching one.
Cisco, in San Jose, can be reached at +1-408-526-4000 or at cisco.com.
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1999 Network World, Inc.
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