Mobile By Ryan Whitwam Feb. 19, 2014 2:50 pm
The founder of the troubled game streaming service OnLive has a new venture, but don’t hold that against him. Steve Perlman has founded Artemis Networks to reinvent wireless technology with a device called the pWave. Whereas regular cellular technology connects many devices to the same tower with the same backhaul, the pWave only connects to a single device. The result, says Perlman, is a staggering increase in bandwidth as if you were standing beneath a cell tower whenever you’re in range of a pWave transmitter.
In some ways this is a successor to LTE, but it isn’t actually using different technology on the client side. The system was demoed using iPhones, Surface tablets, and computers streaming huge files over the simulated cellular connection. Perlman explains pWave as a bubble of cellular service for each device. The tiny (and oddly stylish) Artemis pWave cell locates a mobile device and uses a complex mathematical transformation to connect to it with a unique signal.
A regular cellular network has to deal with capacity issues and signal interference, but pWave apparently does not have those issues. The pCell transmitters can go anywhere without concern for interference or access — each user gets close to the full capacity of these mini cell towers. Of course, this is only a new interface for the wireless part of the connection. The back end still needs enough bandwidth to deliver the speeds in Perlman’s demos. It’s also unclear if replacing a cell tower with hundreds of pWave stations is logistically feasible.
Artemis Networks is looking for a technology partner to help it deploy the technology commercially. Right now, the company is in the process of putting pWave transmitters on 350 rooftops in San Francisco and hopes it can deploy the service in late 2014.
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In some ways this is a successor to LTE, but it isn’t actually using different technology on the client side. The system was demoed using iPhones, Surface tablets, and computers streaming huge files over the simulated cellular connection. Perlman explains pWave as a bubble of cellular service for each device. The tiny (and oddly stylish) Artemis pWave cell locates a mobile device and uses a complex mathematical transformation to connect to it with a unique signal.
A regular cellular network has to deal with capacity issues and signal interference, but pWave apparently does not have those issues. The pCell transmitters can go anywhere without concern for interference or access — each user gets close to the full capacity of these mini cell towers. Of course, this is only a new interface for the wireless part of the connection. The back end still needs enough bandwidth to deliver the speeds in Perlman’s demos. It’s also unclear if replacing a cell tower with hundreds of pWave stations is logistically feasible.
Artemis Networks is looking for a technology partner to help it deploy the technology commercially. Right now, the company is in the process of putting pWave transmitters on 350 rooftops in San Francisco and hopes it can deploy the service in late 2014.
More...
