Dale’s Web Log

Sprint wants to shrink WiMax base stations even further so that they can be used to enhance data transfer speed and capacity in the home.

Sprint has already revealed some of its plans to ensure decent WiMax coverage inside larger buildings with picocell WiMax radios for campuses, offices, shopping malls, and conference centers with picocells. The Reston, Va., operator also has an RFP out for what it calls “Low Cost Internet Base Stations” but most others in the industry call home base stations or “femtocells.” (

A home base station, or femtocell, is a low-cost, low-power 3G cellular radio system that users can put in their dwellings to boost bandwidth and coverage and enable new applications such as fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) in the home. Such mini-base stations have become more interesting to vendors as operators have started to take the devices more seriously, both as an alternative to WiFi hotspots or as a complementary technology.

Sprint has already made it clear that it anticipates that in-building coverage will be an important aspect of its WiMax rollout. “Femtocells are on our radar,” says a spokesman for the operator.

The spokesperson, however, wouldn’t be drawn on any specifics about particular RFPs. “As a matter of policy we don’t comment on RFPs,” he says.

Sprint is said to be looking for several hundred thousand of these mini-base stations along with smaller — but still significant — numbers of picocell-scale equipment for its WiMax deployment, which is at a testing phase right now and due to go live in many major cities in the U.S. in 2008. CDMA and EV-DO support could also be part of the specifications for these appliances.

The problem for vendors wishing to compete will be pulling together these disparate networking technologies. Indoor wireless specialist RadioFrame Networks Inc. has been upfront in its plans to bring a WiMax home base station to market. The company has already worked with Nextel on indoor systems and must be considered a strong contender for any new contracts.

AirWalk Communications Inc. , Airvana Inc. , and Samsung Corp. are all in the running since the three vendors are established in the CDMA business. Samsung also has the WiMax chops and experience, especially now that it has been involved in early deployments in South Korea.

Silicon could be key in enabling a multi-radio mini-base station. Qualcomm Inc. has already started to express an interest in developing chips for this type of application. Major players such as Texas Instruments Inc., as well as smaller companies like PicoChip Designs Ltd. , are already working on dedicated femtocell chipsets. Meanwhile, RadioFrame is extending its own OmniFrame silicon to support WiMax.

Insider analyst Brown, author of the recent “3G Home Base Stations: Femto Cells & FMC for the Masses” report, says that no matter what happens with Sprint’s WiMax-related work, femtocells are one of the new hot technologies in the world of wireless.

“A major operator will roll out a femtocell deployment this year,” says Brown. He predicts that either a CDMA operator in the U.S. or a European operator that has a serious GSM footprint but few 3G networks will be first.

Nokia expects to start selling mobile devices using WiMAX Internet technology in early 2008 WiMAX allows very high-speed Internet access from laptops, phones or other mobile devices over greater distances than previous technologies. Nokia’s closest rival in the handset market, U.S. based Motorola, also plans to bring its first WiMAX enabled mobile phone to the market in 2008.

Intel, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola all support the open-standard WiMAX as an alternative wireless broadband Internet connection alongside third generation mobile telephony networks, on which Internet access can be slowed if networks fill up with voice callers.

“Nokia is dedicating significant research, development and intellectual property to WiMAX and supports efforts in making it a global broadband standard. The combination of WiMAX broadband technology and Web 2.0 services offers people an enriched high-speed Internet experience free from the desktop PC. Nokia plans to bring its first WiMAX enabled mobile device to market in early 2008.” Nokia said in a statement.

WiMAX will make wireless broadband much cheaper to deliver—up to 10 times cheaper than current third-generation cellular telephony networks.

The radio spectrum for WiMAX networks is rented out by regulators at more affordable prices than for 3G mobile phone spectrum, and WiMAX equipment vendors claim the infrastructure and handheld devices will be cheaper than 3G systems.

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The use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in Type I Cryptographic equipment has historically been limited. While FPGA use is allowed, restrictions on how they are used can result in inefficient processing and an increase in system size, weight and power. For example, redundancy and isolation of functionality is required through physically separate devices. This paper introduces new technology that will provide the industry with an FPGA-based single chip cryptographic solution.

NSA DISCLOSES FPGA-BASED SINGLE CHIP CRYPTOGRAPHIC SOLUTION

In December last year, a company called Spectrolab has achieved a new world record in solar cell efficiency. By using concentrated sunlight, Spectrolab demonstrated the ability of a photovoltaic cell to convert 40.7% of the sun’s energy into electricity. By contrast, regular solar cells are 12 - 20% efficient. Multijunction solar cells are credited with helping scientists gather much more data than expected on Mars by dramatically extending the extraterrestrial lifetimes of the Spirit and Opportunity space rovers. But they were initially designed for earthbound applications. After proving themselves in space, the high-efficiency cells are finally becoming cost-effective for generating renewable energy back on Earth.

Multijunction cells perform at higher efficiencies than conventional single-junction silicon solar cells, because they convert more of the solar spectrum into energy by breaking it up into chunks. For example, the first layer of Spectrolab’s record-breaking triple-junction cell is composed of gallium indium phosphide, which converts short-wavelength portions of the spectrum, such as blue and UV. The second layer, made of gallium arsenide, captures the middle part of the spectrum. The third germanium layer does a good job with IR light.

“This solar cell performance is the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved,” said Dr. David Lillington, president of Spectrolab. “The terrestrial cell we have developed uses the same technology base as our space-based cells. So, once qualified, they can be manufactured in very high volumes with minimal impact to production flow.”