Vendor Spotlight - ADAPTIX makes mobile WiMAX a reality

By Byron Young, ADAPTIX Vice President of Marketing and Product Management

Wireless Internet access has quickly become the status quo, not only at work, but at home as well.  As the population has become accustomed to having broadband, multi-megabit Internet access in fixed locations, they are beginning to demand broadband Internet access everywhere – restaurants, airports, shopping malls, train stations and even while mobile. 

Public WiFi has steadily grown over the past few years to meet some of this demand for bandwidth on the go, but outside of hotels, coffee shops and airports, coverage has been poor – effectively limited to remote “islands” of high-speed connectivity.  In addition, public WiFi suffers from poor range (<100m), high susceptibility to interference (unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrum), lack of mobility and no security

On the other hand, 2.5G and 3G cellular data services (GPRS, IXRTT, UMTS, EVDO, etc.) were originally conceived to fully address mobile data needs.  They have been built to support a high degree of RF coverage, user mobility (120+kph speeds) and to provide secure connections.  Unfortunately, all of these services have fallen short in that they have failed to provide sufficient average and peak data throughput to meet the need for multi-megabit personal broadband.  In fact, most 3G services today average throughputs in the 100-300 kbps range.

The industry is now on the cusp of embracing a new generation of 4G services based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) that will meet the demands of megabit throughput personal broadband, yet support full mobility, reasonable range and complete connection security.  ADAPTIX was created to meet the rapidly expanding need for multi-megabit converged voice, video and data services, while offering mobile and fixed wireless service providers, municipalities and other organizations a high-performance, yet compact and cost-effective broadband service platform.

One of the many keys to ADAPTIX’s success is the expertise of its highly experienced research and development team.  ADAPTIX’s technology team has the most OFDMA experience of any infrastructure developer in the industry, having developed three generations of base station and mobile terminal products based on both pre-standard and standards-based OFDMA-TDD systems, including ADAPTIX’s latest IEEE 802.16e/mobile WiMAX systems. 

With ADAPTIX’s OFDMA-TDD technology as the foundation of a broadband wireless network, enterprise and consumer end-users will be able to experience much more than a new type of “broadband pipe.” They will be able to experience complete media freedom, accessing rich content, services and applications, wherever they may be, from a single platform. For example, at one ADAPTIX service installation, users were able to simultaneously receive mobile VoIP calls, play video content such as feature-length movies and transfer large files, at throughputs of up to three Mbps, while traveling at vehicular speeds of over 100 kph through the coverage area.

The company has also received a great deal of recent industry recognition.  For example, at the WiMAX World USA Conference & Expo in Boston, MA this year, ADAPTIX’s new BX-3000 Mobile WiMAX Base Station received the coveted “Best of WiMAX World Award” for Systems Design. This state-of-the-art software-defined, yet hardware-accelerated “stackable” platform allows service providers to meet the rapidly growing global demand for high-performance mobile data service, combined with a very high degree of cost efficiency. Designed specifically for compact, full featured applications, the BX-3000 utilizes ADAPTIX’s own third-generation OFDMA-TDD MAC/PHY engine to support full bandwidth user services at per-sector throughputs of over 35 Mbps using MIMO technology.  Each BX-3000 base station can handle up to three full sectors of maximum mobile WiMAX performance with SISO, MIMO, and beamforming radio technologies fully supported.

The BX-3000 was created without any dependencies on third-party OFDMA or WiMAX chipset vendors. In addition, the mobile base station is embedded with a highly programmable Software Defined Radio (SDR) architecture, which enables easy software upgrades to new features such as multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) and Adaptive Antenna Systems (AAS). The ADAPTIX SDR approach is highly flexible and uses software to encode its operating instructions onto high-performance programmable DSPs and FPGAs. This eliminates the need for traditional “forklift upgrades” as the software can be easily upgraded as the system evolves.

The BX-3000 architecture is based on a “virtual base station” concept, with a central Base Band Unit (BBU) that serves as a central “hub” for up to three remote outdoor-compatible RF units (RFUs), all connected via high-speed fiber optic cables.  This design allows for interference-free installations with maximum RF performance.  Each BX-3000 can support an astounding 1,000 registered users per sector, with up to three sectors configurable.

Moreover, the BX-3000 features an unparalleled IEEE 802.16e-2005 “Standards PLUS” operation for enhanced mobile WiMAX performance and is capable of more than 100 Mbps total airlink throughput with its high-performance OFDMA engine. All of this is enclosed within a self-contained (1 RU) baseband unit, which allows for easy installation, training and maintenance.

The BX-3000 software is highly advanced with multiple layers of sophisticated IP networking, packet classification and routing, and Quality of Service (QoS).  In the WiMAX Forum architecture, the BX-3000 combines the functions of a base station and a full Access Service Node (ASN) gateway device.  As such, it employs a full IP stack (both static and dynamic/OSPF IP routing), support for AAA terminations (RADIUS proxy, EAP server, and wire-speed encryption) and IP address management (both static IP and DHCP Relay Agent) capabilities.  With a sophisticated multi-gigabit network processor, the BX-3000 can be programmed for deep packet inspection, allowing QoS and policy management to be based on IP and application header information.  For example, the BX-3000 can dynamically map between IP QoS and 802.16e QoS.  In addition, it can change QoS handling based on application types such as VoIP versus HTTP (web) traffic. 

The outdoor unit RFU’s are fully hardened devices, compact and capable of supporting an array of up to three antennas each.  A fully-configured three-sector BX-3000 base station can support up to nine antennas in a highly-advanced smart antenna array.  The fiber-based connections allow RFUs and their antenna arrays to be deployed in a wide variety of applications.  For example, a high-rise building could support RFUs on rooftop, street level and indoor locations, while the central BBU is mounted in an indoor equipment room.  Similarly, linear coverage areas could be supported along a transportation corridor (e.g. high speed rail line) with RFUs deployed several kilometers away from a central BBU/RFU pair. 

In addition to the award-winning BX-3000, ADAPTIX also offers a new SX-series mobile terminal product line, the compact SX-300 and the maximum performance SX-500. Both units are third-generation mobile WiMAX terminals that incorporate a high-performance OFDMA engine with standards-compliant 802.16e-2005 software. The SX-300 is designed specifically to provide multi-megabit mobile and fixed wireless end-user connections, and utilizes a scaled down SDR architecture similar to that on the BX-3000, enabling easy software upgrades for future standards and services.

The SX-300 enables easy end-user self installation, and the terminal’s small size and light weight make it ideal for mobile, nomadic or fixed usage. The SX-300 also includes an embedded Web-based management application as well as auto-ranging and registration capabilities. Its OFDMA engine provides approximately 4 Mbps of aggregate airlink performance, and the standards-based QoS supports simultaneous VoIP, IP Video and data applications. The SX-500 is also ideal for fixed, portable or vehicular applications, and although it is intended for mobile services, the terminal can also serve as a fixed broadband wireless solution with performance easily surpassing that of many existing ADSL and cable modem services with data rates up to 12 Mbps combined. The terminal is designed to supply high throughput, maximum connection reliability with its dual antenna array and easy end-user installation and has options for MIMO and SmartAntenna upgrades, making this terminal a perfect fit for business wireless broadband applications.

ADAPTIX is fully committed to the effort to achieve multi-vendor interoperability.  Both the BX-3000 and SX-300 recently underwent rigorous interoperability testing as part of the latest (Sept. 2006) WiMAX Forum Plugfest dedicated to mobile WiMAX. ADAPTIX products were tested for interoperability with equipment from other mobile WiMAX systems and component vendors. The rigorous testing stressed compatibility between vendors across PHY, MAC and Network (IP) protocol layers and featured real world user applications such as streaming IP video.

In addition to the WiMAX Forum Plugfests, ADAPTIX plans to submit its BX-3000 Mobile WiMAX Base Station and SX series of mobile terminals for certification in 2007.  Both Wave 1 and Wave 2 certification test waves are currently planned.

About ADAPTIX
To meet the growing demand for high-bandwidth, integrated mobile voice, video and data applications, ADAPTIX develops a dynamic software-defined, hardware-enabled infrastructure platform for wireless and wireline service providers around the world. ADAPTIX’s standards-based, OFDMA mobile WiMAX solution gives service providers the highest level of spectral and resource flexibility as well as the efficiency to deploy rich media applications quickly and cost effectively. ADAPTIX, which maintains one of the industry’s largest OFDMA-focused patent portfolios, is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with additional offices in Seattle, Washington, and product development and manufacturing facilities in Shanghai, China. For more information, please visit www.ADAPTIX.com.