The telecommunications industry is about to dramatically accelerate its move to OFDM-based mobile data networks, Flarion Technologies Inc. predicts in its recent white paper, “Trains, Planes and Automobiles.”
Unsurprisingly, Flarion contends its own Flash-OFDM technology can help speed the transformation of wireless networks from a voice-centric model to a data-centric one. Flarion defines its Flash-OFDM as a spread-spectrum technology that uses OFDM principally as a wireless access method.
Many traditional wireless carriers are planning to upgrade their networks using UMTS or CDMA2000 technologies, although they are exploring alternatives like OFDM.
In its white paper, Flarion argues that service providers and others should upgrade their networks to support full access to the Internet, secure Intranet access and converged voice, data and broadcast services.
Flarion said that during a test trial, a Flash-OFDM railway network was covered using multiple sites over 90 miles of track. Users reported that, even while traveling at 60 miles per hour, the network supported throughput speeds of 1.5 megabits per second. Flarion said such speeds only marginally affected the downlink and uplink speeds of the network.
Flarion said it also tested in-flight communications for voice and broadband data. The company said it tested its technology on an aircraft flying at 30,000 feet, and said the network supported service up to about 224 miles from the cell site. The company clocked data speeds above 2 Mbps in the downlink and 700 kilobits per second in the uplink at distances up to 200 miles, traveling at more than 186 mph. (For comparison, the average cruising speed of a 747 is more than 550 mph.)
In an automobile test, three motorists all traveling at 30 mph achieved data rates of between 807 Kbps to 675 Kbps in the downlink and 260 Kpbs to 230 Kbps in the uplink.
What? Mobile broadband service on a plane provides better throughput than that on a train?
“In certain ways, providing mobile broadband service to aircraft is less complicated than to trains since there are more line-of-site occasions and less interference caused by structures and terrain,” Flarion said. “Due to these properties, the cell sizes can be very large.”
In its research, Flarion said it used the Cumulative Distribution of Data Rate as a performance measurer. The company said that as it tracked its CDDR, its network technology supported data rates at or above 1.25 Mbps around 50 percent of the time.
Similar network speeds were reported in Nextel Communications Inc.’s network trial of Flarion’s Flash-OFDM technology in a handful of North Carolina markets earlier in 2005. The Nextel trial used 1.9 GHz spectrum. Sprint Nextel Corp., which was formed from Sprint Corp.’s acquisition of Nextel in August, has said it plans to launch a broadband service using its substantial 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings.
In October, T-Mobile Slovakia launched wireless broadband services using Flarion’s Flash-OFDM technology and Siemens AG’s network equipment. The network is available in 20 cities around the Slovak Republic and uses T-Mobile’s 450 MHz spectrum licenses. According to the carrier, the network provides average speeds of 1 Mbps on the downlink and up to 256 Kbps on the uplink.
Flarion was acquired by Qualcomm Inc. in August for $600 million.
