Cisco is expected to buy Navini within the next few weeks, according to Unstrung. ThinkEquity Partners has already issued a report saying that Navini is the most likely target for Cisco, in part because of the startup’s use of “beamforming” technology for WiMax, which can help increase directional signal strengh from WiMax base-station radios.
Wahlman says Cisco will pay “between 200 million and 230 million” dollars for Navini. The Richardson, Tex.-based company has raised around $160 million in financing since its inception in 2000 and has been looking for additional equity financing this year, according to the Dallas Business Journal.
Unstrung recently reported on Cisco’s interest in buying up a WiMax base-station vendor. Among the vendors that Cisco is said to have looked at are Navini, Airspan, Alvarion, and Redline (See Cisco Wooing WiMax Vendors?).
As well as the “smart beamforming” technology, which Navini holds several patents on, the company has added multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) capabilities to its Ripwave line, which helps to increase the data transfer speeds offered over WiMax.
Cisco already dominated the enterprise networking market before WiFi arrived on the scene. As ThinkEquity’s Wahlman says, the company currently “doesn’t have much of a presence” in wide-area wireless. Cisco will face competitors like Motorola, which have been working with WiMax and other broadband radio technologies for a while now.
Navini and Fujitsu Microelectronics announced last week the first demonstration of multi-vendor interoperability using Smart WiMAX technology (pdf). They combined smart beamforming with Multiple Input/Multiple Output (MIMO) on a Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) network.
Navini says Smart WiMAX systems will provide an estimated doubling of system capacity, while offering up to twice the coverage of simple WiMAX networks in a fully mobile setting. The demonstration, the first in the industry between two different vendors, used Navini’s Ripwave® MX8 base station running Mobile WiMAX software and a CPE reference design prototype based on the Fujitsu MB86K21 802.16e-2005 Mobile WiMAX chip. Smart WiMAX beamformed connectivity was achieved using “dedicated pilots,” a mandatory feature for all Wave 2 Mobile .
Arraycom, another beamforming pioneer, is still unattached, although it has partnered with several different companies, including Freescale Semiconductor, Picochip, Alvarion and Samsung.
Arraycom uses smart antennas (also known as adaptive array antennas), that use feedback on the channel to modify the beam shape. Their reference design is said to meet the IEEE 802.16e standard and conforms to the WiMAX Forum base profile.
Nortel is less enthusiastic about beamforming. They say beams cannot say focused in urban multipath environments and believe MIMO is a preferable way to go.
Nortel’s 4G WiMAX solution will bring broadband connectivity to rural communities in southeastern Oklahoma. The Pine and Choctaw Electric Cooperative’s 4G WiMAX network will improve emergency services and provide free access to city police and fire departments as well as to public schools.
The 802.16e-2005 (Mobile WiMAX) standard has incorporated two MIMO systems; Matrix A (using Space Time Transmit Diversity) and Matrix B (using Spatial Multiplexing).
- Space Time Transmit Diversity - Referred to as Matrix A, encodes the same data and transmits it through different antennas. It increases the effective power of a channel.
- Spatial Multiplexing - Referred to as Matrix B, delivers parallel streams of data to a consumer device. It increases data rates.
It is possible to use the Smart Antenna Systems and MIMO techniques together to achieve even bigger advantages.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Arraycomm + Freescale Chips = Beamforming, Arraycomm + Alvarion = Smart Beaming, Go Networks Beamforms Champaign, India Gets Navini Beamforming, Navini Beamforms WiMAX, Metro Beamforming: Wavion & More, 2 Dot 3 Comes to Town, Mobile WiMAX PlugFest, Navini Beamforms Voice, Battle for “4G” and WiMAX World 2007.
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