Mobile & Wireless

Wavesat’s hedged 4G bet paying off

Mobile data communications provider Willcom signs on as customer

by Jim Barthold

Wavesat’s agnostic approach to the 4G mobile space is paying dividends in Japan where mobile data communications provider Willcom will use Wavesat’s chips to accelerate the development and deployment of a high-speed XG-PHS broadband wireless network.

In a way, XG-PHS is the forgotten 4G protocol, following WiMAX and LTE. In Japan, however, where Willcom handles about 50 percent of all data traffic, XG-PHS is the future map to broadband wireless and Wavesat, which uses programmable software to enable its Odyssey 8500 chipset, is cashing in by rearranging its silicon to meet that need.

“There are several different OFDMA wireless broadband standards: WiMAX, LTE and XG-PHS … which is not that different from WiMAX but it’s different enough,” said Raj Singh, Wavesat’s president-CEO.

If anything, XG-PHS is superior and better suited to Willcom’s dense network in data-crazy Japan. While WiMAX specifies 64 QAM, XG-PHS calls for 256 QAM and while WiMAX defines mobility as 40 kilometers-an-hour, the XG-PHS is built for Japan’s bullet trains and specifies 350 kilometers-an-hour.

“Because we’re able to do any of those protocols on the same chip by reprogramming the protocol layer, we’re … able to retarget the same piece of silicon to an XG-PHS implementation which is what Willcom has without having to do a new chip,” said Singh.

Wavesat will provide the chip to a manufacturer being chosen by Willcom to build a terminal device and then will provide the software stack to be deployed in the high-speed XG-PHS OFDMA network.

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