Providing mobile operators and internet service providers (ISPs) with "high capacity and extremely low latency" is the main focus of InfiNet Wireless, said Global Vice President Kamal Mokrani speaking to Telecom Review at Mobile World Congress this year.
The company showcased its InfiLINK XG 1000 1Gbps carrier-class wireless point-to-point solution at the event - one of the best-in-class solutions for building mobile backhauling links for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and corporates of all types.
As one of the largest privately owned broadband wireless access (BWA) development and manufacturing companies in the world, InfiNet Wireless has a range of applications for different sectors of the market. But at Mobile World Congress, the company mostly targeted mobile operators, by catering to the backhauling element of their networks.
InfiNet Wireless is "part of the puzzle of the network itself" and provides solutions that allow operators to significantly increase their backhauling capacity and avoid the traditional bottleneck that has existed for years, the VP explained.
"We offer these products for a number of applications," said Mr. Mokrani. "The key driver for us is to deliver ISPs and mobile operators capacities of up to 1Gbps, and most importantly, extremely low latency [the delay of the signal traveling a roundtrip]. You will notice the difference between low latency and high latency when using voice or video streams. These are the key areas that we have specifically focused on when designing this family of products."
InfiNet Wireless "takes physics to the extreme limit," Mokrani said as he discussed the company's product range. Mobile operators spend a lot of money on spectrum, so InfiNet Wireless provides them with technologies that "squeeze as much as possible" into the spectrum that they have, through ongoing research and development.
"We are only a tiny portion of the costs incurred by the operators compared to the licenses they have to pay to regulators for the radio spectrum itself," said Mr. Mokrani. "The InfiLINK XG 1000's spectral efficiency is the best option available on the marketplace today."
The InfiLINK XG 1000 is essentially an extension of the XG product portfolio InfiNet Wireless unveiled at MWC last year, when the company showcased the XG in different frequency bands with capacities of up to 500Mbps. The company received positive feedback about this family of products, but some, according to Mokrani, expressed their desire for InfiNet to "go the extra mile". So, the InfiNet Wireless team decided to double the capacity and halve the latency, resulting in the InfiLINK XG 1000 showcased at MWC 2017.
Mobile operators want to be able to provide their consumers the ability to watch videos on mobile phones in super-high definition. This can only be achieved with high capacity and low latency, which is exactly what the InfiLINK XG 100 provides, says Mr. Mokrani.
"The wireless solution is designed by InfiNet Wireless engineers using a super fast processor capable of achieving up to 1 million packets per seconds, as well as an intelligent algorithm for flexible adjustment of frequency depending on radio interference," he said. "This function allows network operators to successfully deploy the XG 1000 in license-exempt spectrum."
InfiNet Wireless took a great leap introducing the new product which has double the capacity and half the latency as its predecessor, which begs the question: where to next?
Mokrani told Telecom Review the company is already working on its next-generation platform. The telecoms environment is "very dynamic and evolving - it never stops," he said. "Everyone was talking about 4G a few years ago and now everybody is talking about 5G, which will put even more demand on IP networks and will be very different from the 4G networks we have today."
The InfiNet Wireless R&D team has been meeting regularly to move ahead with its next-generation platform, which will deliver even more capacity with even less spectral requirements. It will be "extremely fast and efficient," said Mokrani. "We will also be increasing the processing power which is very important for video transmissions. Time to market is very important for us."
InfiNet Wireless also showcased its new generation InfiMAN 2x2 point-to-multipoint product family at MWC this year, complemented by a brand new smart antenna base station, known as the Qmxb, and a new range of subscriber terminals fitted with 300 mW (25 dBm) radio transmit modules.
These latest additions to InfiNet's point-to-multipoint family were designed specifically for high density WISP applications, video surveillance deployments in areas where unlicensed 5 GHz spectrum is already congested and for non-line-of-sight (NLOS) wireless connectivity in urban environments. It helps clients substantially increase overall signal level of each subscriber unit and mitigate external radio interference.
"MWC remains one of the key world events providing our team with an exceptional opportunity to collaborate with a number of new and existing partners. The InfiNet stand attracts customers and end users from all corners of the world from different industry sectors, all willing to share their experience and exchange views on the market trends and challenges," said Mr. Mokrani.
"It is the central location for meeting the world's engineers and analytics of mobile and wireless communications industry and discussing market development tendencies. It is safe to say that MWC networking helps InfiNet adapt its hi-tech solutions to fully meet and exceed customers' expectations."
