News Article
BridgeWave to advance wireless market with IBM SiGe technology
IBM's silicon germanium chipset expertise will enable low cost, high-performance 70/80 GHz transmission products
BridgeWave Communications will use IBM's technology to help close the cost gap between millimetre wave high capacity backhaul solutions and traditional microwave solutions.
This will allow mobile operators and wireless carriers to cost effectively deal with growing bandwidth demands.
Recent reports show wireless data traffic, videos, audio and e-mails sent via laptops, smart phones and tablets rose 133 percent in 2011. With many consumers also migrating to 4G networks, this has put a significant strain on global wireless networks, particularly in dense urban cities.
Growing data consumption rates are causing a reduced range of wireless network coverage, raising investment costs for building infrastructure with access points to cover service areas. Alternative approaches, such as integrating backhaul and small cell technology, can reduce these bandwidth bottlenecks and spotty service while increasing speeds over a larger network.
The collaboration between the companies should provide the extremely high silicon integration with GaAs equivalent RF performance, across the entire 71-86 GHz spectrum. BridgeWave says these devices yield ultra-low phase noise performance, enabling the very high spectral efficiencies and system gain for millimetre wave backhaul solutions required by next-generation 4G/LTE networks.
As part of the integration process, BridgeWave will assimilate its proprietary micro-coax mQFN (micro-coax Quad-Flat No-leads) packaging technology along with the IBM designed devices to create high-performance, integrated, low-cost millimetre wave chipsets.
"Until now, the eco-system for millimetre wave components was very limited compared to their microwave counterparts," said Amir Makleff, CEO at BridgeWave. "IBM's research and development efforts in the area of millimetre wave SiGe, along with BridgeWave's proprietary mQFN micro-coax interconnect technologies will allow us to bring cost effective, high performance, carrier-grade solutions to market that operators require as they build out their 4G/LTE networks."
"BridgeWave Communications' use of IBM's silicon germanium technology as the basis for their backhaul network solutions will provide their customers with a platform that can scale to meet the exploding data growth rates of today and tomorrow," said Danny Elad, Manager, Analogue & Mixed Signal, IBM Research-Haifa.
"We are extremely excited that initial sampling results of these designs are exceeding expectations and will enable BridgeWave to start integration into products in 2012," added Idan Bar-Sade, senior vice president of engineering and product management at BridgeWave.
BridgeWave will be will be showcasing its products at Hall 3.1 HS 86 at the Mobile World Congress between February 27 - March 1, 2012.
