NEW YORK-For the price of additional transceiver cards and its Zone Manager product, mDiversity, San Jose, Calif., promises it can double second-generation GSM network capacity without additional base stations or handset modifications.
“We believe there is a real opportunity in improving today’s 2G voice system, especially for GSM, and then move forward into 2.5G…(where) we are working on a product to improve the overall (data) throughput of GPRS, which is very slow,” said Bill Howe, president and chief executive officer.
“Much to our surprise, we’ve had most interest recently in the United States because of the GPRS/GSM overlays … In an economic downturn, there has been renewed interest by service providers and OEMs in upgrades, an incremental, evolutionary approach instead of swapping out equipment.”
Zone Manager, which resides in the base station sub-system, senses the best radio-frequency link and routes the call to the most appropriate base station instantly, without requiring changes in switch time slots or frequencies, Howe said May 21 at the Lehman Brothers Inc. “Next Generation Wireless” conference. The results are lower power requirements and reduced interference.
“About 30 percent of the time in a typical urban environment a base station other than the one your phone is communicating with would work better for your phone … We reduce shadow fades, which are worst in urban areas and in rolling hill terrain,” Howe said.
MDiversity, which has obtained five patents and applied for others, introduced the first version of its macrodiversity Zone Manager product earlier this spring. The company is in discussions with the seven major GSM infrastructure suppliers and a few other newer players.
“Those with lower market share that need more features are most interested. We are very close (to agreements) with a couple of OEMs, but they are keeping it close to the vest … We hope to have their public support by summer when we plan to initiate a program to drive this through standards-setting bodies,” Howe said.
“Getting a place in the OEMs’ internal development resources is a big challenge for us. … We are selling a feature and a roadmap to an industry that is not used to taking ideas from outside companies.”
On its own and in partnership with several carriers, mDiversity also is in the process of conducting drive tests of its technology in areas like Charlotte, N.C. The goal is to create demand for Zone Manager from wireless operators, he said. By the end of the year, mDiversity hopes to engage in full-fledged trials.
Howe described as complementary rather than competitive a number of other technologies available for increasing the spectral efficiency of wireless networks. These include: the use of microcells to split cells; software enhancements like frequency hopping, discontinuous transmission power control (DTX) and adaptive multirate (AMR); smart antennas, which focus beams to discriminate between carrier signals and interference.
“Smart antennas work better for big, long roads, but they do not combat shadow fading,” Howe said.
“People are most excited about AMR, which Nokia is developing, but AMR does not improve data rates and it requires new handsets.”
Before joining mDiversity, Howe spent 20 years at Intel Corp., most recently working on flash memory, which is used in wireless devices. Founded two years ago, mDiversity has obtained $30 million in two rounds of venture-capital financing.
“Contrary to what people think, this is a great time to be a start-up company, especially one with money, because you can get office space, software engineers, lawyers and all the back-up support you need,” Howe said.
“We’re not in the business of providing apps (software applications). We believe the radio link is the weakest link and that demand (for network capacity) will always outstrip supply. We want to make radio links work better.”
