Using a novel approach to antenna design, Redmond, Wash.-based Metawave Communications Corp. plans to tackle the wireless communications industry with promises of increased channel capacity and improved call quality.
The SpotLight Multibeam Antenna Platform is Metawave’s launch product, currently targeted at analog cellular operators because of their immediate need for more calling capacity, but the product also can be used for enhanced specialized mobile radio and personal communications services systems. PCS providers that install the antenna platform will be able to reduce infrastructure costs because they will need to build fewer sites, the company said.
Metawave’s multibeam antenna system can increase a cell site’s analog capacity 30 percent to 40 percent and increase the site’s total coverage area by up to 50 percent, according to Thomas Huseby, chairman and chief executive officer of the company. SpotLight, which is compatible with existing cellular infrastructure, offers carriers a major plus by increasing capacity within existing cell sites.
“Locating additional cell sites is becoming technically difficult, terribly expensive and politically tortuous, ” Huseby said. Further, Metawave deduces from industry research that increased call capacity, meaning better reception and fewer dropped calls, will help carriers retain customers and reduce churn. The company hopes to have product available this summer.
Huseby and Doug Reudink, the company’s president and chief technical officer, founded Metawave last year, but technology development originated several years ago in U S West NewVector Group’s Advanced Technology Group. Once U S West proved the concept of multibeam antenna systems was viable, the company sold the intellectual property rights to what now is Metawave, in order to get a jump on product development. At U S West, Reudink helped develop those property rights. More than a decade ago, while working at Bell Laboratories, Reudink studied the fundamentals of multibeam antennas .
Metawave said U S West NewVector will be its first customer. Cellular network trials are being conducted currently on U S West’s system in Bellevue, Wash. Today a typical triangular cell site is configured with two 120 degree receive antennas and two 120 degree transmit antennas per sector. Dividing coverage separates a site’s users who are communicating on the same frequency, which reduces interference. However, this arrangement allows a particular sector to use only a third of the sites’s channels, which limits capacity.
SpotLight is comprised of a high gain four-beam antenna system on each side of the triangular cell site, solid state switch matrixes, a linear power amplifier matrix assembly, fast-scan receivers, 32-bit processors and algorithmic technology. Each beam is like a finger with a range of 30 degrees. The receivers and processors scan each cell site’s radio frequency environment, including traffic patterns and terrain variables. Algorithms interpret these elements and allocate the radios with the most free spectrum to antenna beams where the strongest call congestion exists.
