Founded 2009 in Silicon Valley, USA, this privately owned company draws its academic roots from the University of California in Berkeley. By 2013, it had grown to 39 employees based in Santa Clara and Berkeley, with a high proportion of Ph.Ds and MS graduates. Their advisory panel includes well known industry figures such as Arun Sarin (ex CEO Vodafone Group) and Eric Brewer (VP Infrastructure for Google). The CEO is Steve Sifferman (ex Powerwave, ArrayComm).
The company offers a wireless backhaul solution delivering true "Non Line of Sight" capability, and is marketed as a universal technical capability for both 3G and LTE Metrocell backhaul.
After operating in stealth mode until February 2013, the company launched its 1st generation product at Mobile World Congress that year.
Products
Their AbsoluteAir system comprises two nodes – a concentrator node (CN) and end node (EN), wirelessly connected using a single unpaired 10MHz spectrum in the range 2.5 to 3.7GHz. The wireless link uses proprietary modulation and signalling techniques to achieve extremely high spectral efficiency of 30 bit/sec/Hz using 256QAM and 6/8 coding.
GPS is used for timing at the CN (so needing some view of the sky), but is not required at the ENs. A variety of standard commercial silicon including FPGAs is used in the design
High Capacity: Each CN can handle up to 300Mbit/s total throughput, each EN up to 75Mbit/s.
Self-aligning: The antenna has 100 degrees field of view and automatically/electrically aligns and adjusts the antenna aperture without mechanical movement. This simplifies installation which requires little specialist knowledge.
True Non-Line-of-Sight: The system has been proven in trials to operate in dense urban environments with extensive multi-path reflections despite high rise buildings in the direct path of the link.
High frequency re-use: The technology is designed with a frequency reuse of 1, allowing additional CNs and ENs to be deployed in dense areas as required.
Medium Range: The system has a range of up to 2-4km, which may be useful in areas of sparsely or diversely deployed small cells.
The key market differentiator of this solution is the low total cost of ownership. Operators can use the same single solution for backhaul to reduce complexity, inventory and training costs. No alignment is required during installation, saving time and specialist skills.
Market progress
In early 2013, the company had secured trial agreements with operators, with a view to the first commercial deployment later in the year.
Their roadmap includes higher capacity per EN, additional frequency bands, and reduced power consumption.
They have established several partnerships and conducted live trials worldwide, such as at the SAIL2015 event in Amsterdam
Read more details on the Tarana Wireless website
