Established in 2003, Purewave Networks is a privately held company located in Santa Clara, California. Financial results are not publicly disclosed but the company secured Series C funding of $5 million in April 2012.
Prior to entering the LTE space the company developed products for Mobile WiMax (802.16e), designing and manufacturing small form factor basestations for urban and rural sites.
The company established a customer base in excess of 160 WiMax network operators worldwide, with product variants supporting frequency bands between 1.8 and 3.8GHz.
Small Cells
In May 2012, PureWave announced a portfolio of LTE small cells intended for dense urban, large venue and remote site deployments. These incorporate Aricent's LTE software stack and use TI's Keystone SoC architecture.
The PureWave Constellation LTE small cells offer high capacity of up to 256 active users, catering for up to three frequency bands and up to three channels within the same unit. Wi-Fi is also integrated onboard as an option.
Two models named Leo 200 and Leo 500 offer RF power options of 2 Watts and 5 Watts per antenna respectively. PureWave also offers a 250mW per antenna variant, intended for deployment in large venues such as arenas, convention centers etc.
In June 2013, the range was expanded to include tri-mode 3G/LTE/Wi-Fi indoor small cells named Constellation Lyra. These are powered over Ethernet, supporting 1 or 2 channels each of 3G and LTE and is based on the latest TI 6630 baseband chip and TI AFE7500 RF front end. Two models are Leo 200, which provides one carrier each of 3G and LTE. The Leo 400 provides two carriers for each of 3G and LTE.
Initial customers are likely to include the installed base of WiMax operators – many of whom will be migrating to LTE. Live operator trials were ongoing in early 2013.
Key differentiators include:
- Heritage in small cells and 4G technology, now on their 3rd generation of product
- High capacity: up to 256 concurrent active users rather than 16/32 of some other small cells
- Optional TDD mode: Since WiMax is a TDD technology, PureWave's experience is highly relevant to TD-LTE
- Multi-channel and multi-band capability
- Expansion slots allow for additional/new capabilities to be added, such as traffic shaping or Deep Packet Inspection.
More information on the PureWave Networks website
Watch Ronen Vengosh, PureWave's VP Marketing and business development, describe these new products on display at Small Cells World Summit 2013 in this youtube clip.
