CIE Components in Electronics
MIMOtech, a specialist in high capacity point-to-point radios, has announced the launch of the Starburst Janus, an ultra high capacity packet radio for last mile backhaul. Starburst Janus uses a multi-antenna technology yielding a spectral efficiency of 25b/s per Hz.
Backhaul capacity is one of the major challenges facing LTE/LTE-A operators today as they roll out networks and respond to increasing data traffic and growing subscriber numbers. Starburst Janus’ ultra high capacity enables data rates of several Gb/s to be achieved on a single frequency channel, providing four times the capacity and more than double the link performance achieved by competing products in a form factor that is reduced by 50%. The device employs line-of-sight (LoS) 4×4 MIMO and parallel radio processing, allowing a 100% improvement in spectral usage and significantly improving operators’ total cost of ownership (TCO).
“Starburst Janus offers double the performance of traditional non-line of sight MIMO – measured in either capacity or distance – coupled with a significantly lower cost per bit transported,” said Geoff Carey, Director at MIMOtech. “It needs a significantly smaller antenna spacing than other LoS MIMO products on the market, which is a massive advantage for tower or rooftop applications where mounting space comes at a premium.”
Janus employs a patented configuration of LoS MIMO that has a substantially smaller form factor than any other radio currently employing this technology. It uses two cross-polarised antennas spaced 1.5m apart, resulting in a mechanical configuration occupying a space that is comparable to that of a LTE sector antenna. Furthermore it uses a range of advanced microwave technologies that help operators to satisfy the growing demand for capacity – co-channel dual polarization (CCDP) with XPIC technology (utilizing the different polarisations of a frequency channel); higher order modulation schemes up to 1024QAM; high efficiency radio MAC (medium access control); asymmetrical bandwidth delivery; and Layer 1 link aggregation (Multi-Carrier Adaptive Bandwidth Control). All of these techniques have been used to improve spectral efficiency and thus boost microwave capacity; however LoS MIMO offers a further 100% improvement in spectral efficiency over and above these techniques alone.
