Using the Zak-OTFS “mother waveform,” Cohere is enhancing spectral efficiency for 4G and 5G while building a digital twin of the physical world in the run-up to programmable networks for ISAC and NTN
Today Cohere Technologies is working with communications service providers (CSPs) to address a durable and fundamental problem in maximizing spectral efficiency. Given its criticality to effective, performant wireless communications, there’s a straight line from improving spectral efficiency to service quality, operational cost and return on the precious capital spent to acquire frequency licenses.
In the process of addressing this issue with its Universal Spectrum Multiplier (USM), Cohere has also set a course toward enabling two use cases that have become synonymous with 6G: integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) and the convergence of non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) and terrestrial networks (TNs). Speaking with RCR Wireless News during the Telecom Infra Project’s FYUZ event in Dublin, Ireland, Cohere’s Chairman and CEO Ray Dolan discussed how the company is delivering results today while setting the stage for a massive coming wave of innovation in how mobile networks are managed and monetized.
Working with Vodafone, Cohere used its USM software to increase performance of the CSP’s multi-vendor Open RAN 5G network across a multi-cell cluster near Madrid, Spain. With Bell Canada, Cohere’s USM technology was successfully used to increase performance in single-user and multi-user MIMO systems transmitting in the 850 MHz band. Notably, the USM was integrated with existing 5G Standalone network infrastructure provided by a major network equipment vendor.
Cohere’s USM is built on Delay-Doppler channel modeling and works with 4G and 5G networks in both FDD and TDD configurations. Using machine-learning techniques, USM enhances scheduling and beamforming capabilities to understand traffic flows and patterns. With this information, CSPs can dynamically adjust capacity and coverage based on real-world network and user behavior.
Dolan described USM as a Layer 2 and Layer 3 solution that builds on work done in the radar industry. “We listen to reference symbols that are in the standard,” he said. “It’s completely transparent to the radio layer, the physical layer…From that it quickly discerns what the channel state is to every attached user…And then it provides that channel state to the scheduler so now when a base station schedules users it already knows what the channel state is to every attached user. When you know the channel state, you schedule with perfect knowledge. You’re not guessing anymore and the performance is significantly better.”
Further down in stack in Layer 1, Cohere in October announced its Pulsone Technology to serve as the foundation for future ISAC and NTN solutions. Pulesone (a portmanteau of “pulse” and “tone”) uses the Zak-OTFS (Orthogonal Time Frequency Space) waveform which was patented in 2010 by Cohere founders Shlomo Rakib and Ronny Hadani.
Dolan referred to OTFS as the “mother waveform. It is all waveforms; it is the mathematical generalization, if you will, of all of the 3GPP waveforms to date…It can do TDMA in one extreme, it can do FDMA in another extreme, it can do all of the other waveforms that we’ve done in history…It’s a pulse when it’s trying to address delay; it’s a tone when it’s trying to address Doppler.”
Pulses map to sensing and radar-based solutions while tones generally map to communications-based solutions. This directly aligns with the outlook for ISAC, a marquee potential 6G use case that would leverage distributed mobile network infrastructure to detect objects moving through the physical environment. ISAC is seen as a priority for the defense industry, and it could be used for a range of other applications such as smart cities, health monitoring and autonomous vehicles.
“We are both a radar technology and communication technology in one,” Dolan said. “So that’s going to give us a huge advantage” as 3GPP progresses 6G standards. “Very soon we’ll realize that every antenna is a sensor…Pretty much like Find My iPhone, you’re going to have find my everything.”
With regard to NTNs — and further integration of NTNs and TNs — Dolan acknowledged it’s “early innings,” but noted we’re currently in a “renaissance” as private sector development of launch capabilities has materially dropped the price of delivering payloads to orbit which, in turn, has led to a boom in space-based assets. To overcome the signal delay of transmissions from space, along with the Doppler spread caused by satellites in motion, Cohere “will have a very strategic role in addressing the delay and Doppler impairments that are currently challenging NTNs…We’ll be bringing broadband profitably to those NTNs.”
The bigger picture here, Dolan said, is an “elastic, programmable Layer 1 platform and an elastic, programmable Layer 2 platform” capable of working on any spectrum or silicon, at the edge and in the cloud. “This is what Open RAN was all about – it was innovation,” not creating a new way to exert pricing pressure on vendors. “What the industry really needs is massive innovation and driving to cloud economics.”
Final thought tying the discussion together, Dolan said: “Long term, it’s going to be a path to massive increases in profitability.”
