SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project targets increased data throughputs in cellular and access backhaul networks that are based on copper twisted-pairs to address the ever-growing demand for capacity and the consequent bottlenecks that are experienced in them. The performance in the multi-twister-pair channels is limited by crosstalk and interference caused by various sources in their noisy environment. The technology to be developed in this Phase I project offers significant increases in throughput through cost-effective interference-mitigation mechanisms. The company?s key innovation is in low-latency dynamic interference cancellation algorithms, which greatly enhance system performance while maintaining acceptable implementation complexity. The project will involve both research and development at the algorithmic level, as well as system implementation challenges associated with the minimization of the system?s cost and power consumption. More specifically, the innovation includes novel approaches to training-sequence design and numerically-robust schemes for the mitigation of both self-induced crosstalk as well as unpredictable crosstalk originating from other systems sharing the cable of twisted pairs (alien interference). Based on preliminary results, it is anticipated that this technology will offer critically needed throughput enhancements ranging from a factor of 2 to a factor of 5, depending on the operating scenario. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project would be in enabling low-cost broadband services to a greater part of the population and thus also in fostering remote education, telecommuting and e-commerce. About 80% of the cell towers in the US utilize copper twisted-pairs for their backhaul, and the equipment market, valued at $5.6B in 2009, is expected to grow to $11.2B by 2013 due to deployment of bandwidth-intensive smart-phones and cellular Internet offerings. Hence, the relevant market sectors directly impacted are chip and communications equipment manufacturing. Many new micro-cells and femto-cells, offering wireless access in a coverage area smaller than that of a typical cell tower, are being deployed to offer wireless broadband coverage while relying on cooper-based backhaul. The copper infrastructure typically suffers capacity limitations and is interference-dominated while the higher-capacity alternatives, fiber and microwave, are costly and slow to deploy. The interference-mitigation technology enabling this breakthrough, developed in collaboration with the University of Texas at Dallas, may be applicable in other multi-channel communication systems, and can serve, for example, to better utilize scarce wireless spectrum

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase 2 project targets the realization of a cost-effective solution for achieving increased data throughputs in the crosstalk-constrained copper-medium-based cellular and access backhaul networks, to address the growing demand for capacity experienced in them. Existing equipment, confined to the use of twisted-pairs due to the unavailability of fiber in most locations, often avoids the use of spectrally efficient VDSL, whose high-capacity comes at a cost of vulnerability to interference. The technology developed in Phase 1 of this project, and its implementation in hardware and software as part of the Phase 2 project, will effectively address this vulnerability of VDSL and recover most of its potential capacity through crosstalk cancellation. The company?s key innovation is in non-iterative, low-latency, reduced-complexity, dynamic interference cancellation algorithms, which greatly enhance performance while requiring less than 10% of silicon-area increase in existing VDSL2 multi-channel solutions. The project will involve both research and development aspects, as well as system implementation challenges associated with the minimization of complexity and power consumption. Based on the Phase 1 project?s successful validation of the technology?s critically needed throughput enhancements and its commercial potential, it is anticipated that this technology will be widely incorporated in copper-based equipment. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is in extending the useful life of the existing in-ground copper infrastructure, thus allowing equipment providers to continue to focus their resources on delivering ever-increasing bandwidths, while also offsetting the high expense of new fiber deployment. Benefits are also realized through the company?s partnerships with universities, where the company works closely with key faculty and with students, provides seminars, and has an ongoing internship program that results in the full-time hiring of graduates. According to publicly available reports, mobile data traffic in North America is expected to increase by a factor of over 20 by the year 2015. This massive increase in data consumption, brought on primarily by the rapid adoption of smart-phones and bandwidth-intensive applications, is already placing an enormous burden on the backhaul infrastructure, which carries telecommunications for cellular, internet and landline voice traffic. Resolution of the bandwidth congestion requires significant improvement in telecom infrastructure including backhaul and access, both of which are largely copper-based in North America. The company?s interference-mitigation technology will address this problem in a cost-effective manner by allowing the growing demand for bandwidth to be satisfied with the existing infrastructure