NEW YORK-Paratek Microwave Inc., a Columbia, Md., company established by a former U.S. Army researcher, plans to accelerate the evolution of communications capacity with DRWiN, short for Dynamically Reconfigurable Wireless Networks.
In field trials since in October, the debut product line of electronically scanning DRWiN antennas should be ready for sale by February, said Louise C. Sengupta, president and chief executive officer.
She founded the company in 1998 after spending eight years as a scientist at the Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, Md., where she developed missile tracking antennas. Paratek Microwave licensed patents to her inventions from the federal government.
“This is a whole different ball game. We can come to market at a price people are paying for fixed components, and this can be added on without a lot of change initially,” Sengupta said.
“There is a need for scanning in 2G, 2.5G and 3G. The more layers of technology carriers try to integrate, the more demand for increased capacity. The industry needs reconfigurable equipment. There is no way else to do it.”
DRWiN is designed to eliminate the waste of capacity that now occurs when antennas broadcast a query seeking permission for individual subscribers to communicate.
“Each broadcast is spread uniformly across the entire sector and therefore the total radiated power of the antenna is diluted over the entire scan volume,” Paratek Microwave said in its DRWiN product description.
“Most of the energy is wasted on subscribers who are simply being told, `it’s not your turn yet.’ “
The DRWiN are smart antennas that focus all their power at individual subscribers in sequence, then revert to broad area scanning to find customers requesting new service.
Paratek Microwave also said it has designed DRWiN to avoid the Achilles’ heel of fixed-beam antennas, which continuously monitor an entire sector. Ambient noise anywhere in the sector downgrades and even disconnects communications across the entire sector.
DRWiN can be reconfigured from a 120-degree beam down to a 2-degree beam. It can switch to a narrow beam in order to avoid an outside noise source, “while continuing to provide service to the rest of the sector,” the company said.
Paratek Microwave also has designed the DRWiN antennas to allow multiple beams to operate independently at the same frequency within the same sector.
“This further increases capacity by providing service to multiple customers simultaneously at maximum data throughputs,” the company said.
DRWiN is based on Parascan, the trademarked name for “a breakthrough, tunable dielectric material,” Sengupta said.
Out of Parascan, the company is fabricating its fast-tuning, passive “Electronically Tunable RF” components and antennas. The trademarked “ETRF” components, which became available in June, are in field trials with multiple customers, she said.
Motorola Inc. is a strategic investor in the privately held company. Systems integrators like Motorola, L.M. Ericsson and Lucent Technologies Inc. are the target market for most of Paratek Microwave’s products.
