Good press for SDR: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/09/23/0024219.shtml
September 23, 2007 Prototype Software That Fills a Cellphone Gap By MICHAEL FITZGERALD VANU BOSE is the son of a fabled engineer, but he garnered no mercy when he presented his big idea at a technical conference in 1996. Mr. Bose’s graduate work at M.I.T. involved using software to handle the radio function in a cellular phone. He remembers that after he successfully demonstrated his technology, an audience member stood up and dismissed it with: “Congratulations! You’ve just invented the world’s most expensive cellphone.” Mr. Bose, a personable man, shrugged off the criticism. He expected that over time, the increasing processing speed of chips would make such phones much cheaper. But he didn’t want to make the phones. He wanted to remake the wireless base station, the guts of the world’s cellular networks, by changing them from complex systems that incorporate hardware, software and the electronics needed for wireless communications into systems run primarily with software. Most of us don’t think of our cellphones as radios, but they are. Any wireless device uses a radio. Figuring out a way to operate the radio with software has obvious potential advantages: for one, it’s easier and cheaper to upgrade software than it is to send field technicians to cellular towers to add components. And a software-based radio — the industry calls it software-defined radio — could handle multiple cellular signals at the same time, the way a computer can run a browser, a word processor and a spreadsheet all at once. So, in theory, letting cellular companies accommodate new spectrum or technologies by doing software upgrades could expand coverage and services while possibly reducing what we pay for them. That promise prompted Mr. Bose to start a company in 1998, while he was still in graduate school. He called it Vanu Inc. (The family surname was already in use: his father, Amar, had founded the Bose Corporation in 1964.) The company bumped along primarily on military contracts for developing software-based radio devices. (The armed forces typically use different kinds of radios but need them all to talk to one another, which has prompted two large research projects, Speakeasy and the current Joint Tactical Radio System.) Then, as cheap semiconductor technology caught up with the needs of his software, he was able to pursue commercial markets. He now has several customers for the company’s AnyWave wireless base stations for cellphone networks. Mr. Bose is not the first to pursue converting radios to software. The idea had been developed in the late 1980s, and Joseph Mitola, an engineer now at the Mitre Corporation, a research organization, is credited with being the first to discuss an effective software radio architecture, at a conference in 1991. Well-established companies like Motorola and Ericsson now use elements of software-defined radio for their base stations. But Mr. Bose was the first to come to market with software that could handle multiple networks with the same equipment. Software radio appears to offer an elegant solution to what has been a vexing problem: how to have a single handset, like a cellphone, communicate across multiple networks. For instance, the G.S.M. standard, for global system for mobile communications, is used broadly in Europe, and most notably in the United States by AT&T. But it does not work with phones built for the C.D.M.A. standard, for code division multiple access, that is used in the United States by Verizon and others and is popular in South Korea. So, as a Verizon cellphone user, when I spent several weeks in England this summer, I was instructed to rent a phone from Vodafone. It took several attempts over several days to get my calls to forward from my Verizon number, and I paid for two phones for the better part of a month. Mr. Bose’s software makes it possible for the network to switch modes automatically. While the AnyWave Base Station still includes components like wireless transmitters and receivers, the company ultimately would like to focus on selling its software to other businesses that build base stations. That would position Vanu to become “the Microsoft of the wireless base station industry,” said Bruce Sachs, a general partner at Charles River Ventures, which recently put money into an $8 million funding round for Vanu. Mr. Sachs says that the market for base stations is worth billions of dollars by itself and that as cellular operators upgrade over time to technologies like WiMax or H.S.D.P.A., for high-speed downlink packet access, wireless markets worldwide will be open to Vanu. There is also potential for markets that are just emerging, like that for “femto cells.” (In mathematics, a femto is a quadrillionth.) The cells will plug into a power outlet and bolster cellular coverage for a home or business. But that is in the future: Ian Cox, an analyst at ABI Research, projects that the market for software-based radio won’t start to boom until 2012. THE present is more modest, and it rests in rural markets like De Leon, Tex., home of Mid-Tex Cellular, Vanu’s first commercial customer. Toney Prather, the chief executive of Mid-Tex, said he was intrigued by the technology because the company makes a good deal of its money from roaming charges for people who aren’t already its customers, and Vanu would give him a way to add more networks without having to add expensive base stations. He first used Vanu’s software to upgrade his existing network to G.S.M., and in the next few weeks he intends to add C.D.M.A. Rural cellularization may not sound like much, but Mr. Bose is a follower of Clayton M. Christensen, the management guru, who also happens to serve on Vanu’s board. Mr. Christensen told him that the best place to start a new business is where there isn’t yet an established market. So Vanu is starting a project, its largest yet, in Alaska, and is involved with I.B.M, on a demonstration for a project to bring villages in India onto the cellular network. No longer, then, is Vanu Bose building the world’s most expensive cellphone. In fact, he may help make the cellphone possible everywhere. Michael Fitzgerald is a Boston-area writer on business, technology and culture. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
