The IEEE chapter at Stevens hosted a lecture from Dr. Mihai Banu, CTO and founder of startup Blue Danube Systems, on Wednesday, October 22 in the Burchard 118 lecture hall. The focus of the talk was the inefficiencies of current mobile wireless network infrastructure, and Blue Danube Systems’ plan to increase their capacity of mobile wireless networks.
Since 2010, there has been a massive increase in mobile data usage that wireless carriers have been struggling to keep up with, Banu said.
According to studies, wireless carriers advertise a higher spectrum effieciency, that is how many bits per second can be transmitted per unit of bandwidth, than what most users experience. “There’s a huge gap between the peak efficiency [of mobile networks] and what you’re getting in practice,” said Banu. “We’re already at the limit of signal-to-noise ratio.”
Blue Danube Systems’ proposed solution to the spectrum efficiency problem is to change the scope of the signal that cell towers broadcast. Currently, if a client, such as a phone or 4G-enabled laptop makes a data request, the nearest tower will send a response from whichever of its three 120-degree sectors is facing the client. The inefficiency lies in that the response is also broadcast to all clients in that range.
Banu’s company is developing a system that allows cell towers to only broadcast in the direction of the specific clients that send requests. This supposedly increases efficiency of the network by cutting down on the range that towers are broadcasting in. “[BDS’s] solution operates at five times the average efficiency of the upcoming generation of LTE,” Banu said.
According to Banu, BDS’s solution is a relatively simple one to implement because it doesn’t involve traditional methods of maximizing bandwidth, such as buying more wireless spectrum, installing new cell towers or pico- and microcells, offloading data requests to Wi-Fi, or throttling data usage when customers go over their plan’s monthly limit.
Buying spectrum and installing towers and pico- and microcells are very costly, said Banu. Wi-Fi offloading, while putting less stress on networks, is ultimately a loss of revenue for wireless carriers. Data throttling is currently carriers’ most popular tactic of regulating stress on networks. The problem, Banu suggested, is that users hate it. “Our company is all about increasing spectrum efficiency with a low-friction method,” he said.
BDS’s solution to increase the capacity of wireless networks is currently being funded by California-based venture capital firms. When asked if BDS has plans to license the technology to major US carriers like Verizon and AT&T, Banu said, “Venture capitalists are in it to make money,” suggesting his company wouldn’t have received so much funding if there wasn’t a good chance that their system could gain widespread implementation.
“Verizon and AT&T gave good feedback to our investors,” he said. “Major carriers want equipment that works with as few complications as possible. They don’t typically deal with smaller vendors… we have to work with the OEMs they buy from.”
Banu mentioned that BDS would be performing some real-world tests of the system at their headquarters soon. He didn’t have a launch timeframe, but he assured the lecture hall that there would be significant progress made from Blue Danube Systems in the coming months.
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