xG Technology has been featured in an article on cognitive radios that has appeared in MIT Technology Review. Entitled "4G on the Baby Monitor Frequency," it discusses how a rural telecommunications provider, Northeast Florida Telephone, will be signing up as many as 8,000 people to receive 4G wireless broadband service using xG's cognitive radio technology.
The $2.4 million project between xG Technology and NEFCOM, which was the subject of a recent xG press release that detailed the order for xMax broadband networking equipment, will result in the delivery of fixed and mobile broadband data and voice services at competitive prices. This will be a first for people in the area.
The unique aspect of the arrangement is that the service will be delivered over the 902-928MHz band – normally the domain of baby monitors, garage-door openers and other short-range devices. Wireless services deployed in this frequency would normally be subject to a variety of interference from devices operating there. This is where xG's advanced cognitive radio technology comes in.
Using sophisticated Interference mitigation software developed by xG, radios can remain on channels with moderate to high levels of interference that would prevent other radio systems from functioning. This increases xMax’s network capacity several-fold over current radio technologies in today’s crowded radio bands.
Quoted in the article was Craig Partridge, chief scientist for networking research at Raytheon BBN. He agrees that the xG-NEFCOM deal “will mark the first commercial use of cognitive radios and will highlight the fact that the technology has an important role to play in the commercial sector."
The article states that NEFCOM is one of about 1,300 U.S. carriers serving rural areas that may never get full coverage from giants like AT&T and Verizon. The FCC is subsidizing myriad efforts to fill these gaps. MIT Technology Review covered the FCC's efforts in a recent article. xG Technology also commented on the latest developments regarding rural broadband in this Yahoo Finance article.
The article concludes by framing the announcement in light of the ongoing spectrum crisis debate, the governments efforts to deal with it via approaches including spectrum sharing (as promoted by the PCAST report), and the potential for technologies like xG's cognitive radio system to play a key role.
MIT Technology Review is the world’s oldest technology publication and its web site alone gets over 4 million unique visitors per month.
The article can be read in its entirety at this link: Cognitive Radio Article by MIT Technology Review.
Daniel Carpini
Marketing Director
xG Technology Inc.
Tags: cognitive radio, dynamic spectrum access, FCC, interference mitigation, PCAST, rural broadband, spectrum, spectrum sharing, white spaces, wireless spectrum