Wireless / Indoor / Enterprise 5G
Airvine is a fast growing Silicon Valley innovator of advanced high-capacity wireless solutions for in-building enterprise backbone applications. Their solution utilizes WaveTunnel™ technology to backhaul Wi-FI 5/6/6E access points, IoT equipment, and eventually private 5G radios. With the arrival of broadband Wi-Fi, a new, faster, and much more flexible backbone solution is required.
The traditional approach to in-building backbones has been to use structured wiring systems based on copper cable or fiber. Older copper cable does not have the throughout to handle Wi-Fi 6/6E, and new cable is costly, cumbersome, and very inflexible.
The Airvine solution leverages the 14 GHz of unlicensed spectrum in the V-band up @ 60 GHz, along with a high-gain beamforming antenna, and state of the art RFIC technology from Sivers Semiconductors.
The great strength of the Airvine solution is fast and effortless moves, adds, and changes, which is of great value in today’s enterprise. One of the biggest weaknesses in a legacy wired solution is that they do not adapt well to change. Airvine technology can be installed quickly by technicians with no RF skills, which makes it perfect for retrofits. Its high-gain beamforming antenna together with Sivers Semiconductors’ technology, allows the system to punch a 60 GHz signal through almost any in-building obstruction, if required.
Each WaveTunnel node utilizes two of the Sivers Semiconductors’ WiGig RFICs (TRXBF01). This allows the system to both relay traffic as well as add/drop it to locally attached Wi-Fi APs.
SiversInside – TRXBF01
“The Airvine WaveTunnel node contains remarkable beamforming and beam steering capabilities that enable it to penetration walls and traverse longer distances within the enterprise. It incorporates innovative RFIC’s from Sivers Semiconductors and Airvine-designed phased array antennas,” explains Vivek Ragavan, President & CEO of Airvine.
Airvine’s patented RF innovation extends the range and gain of wireless signals, penetrating walls and steering around obstacles that impede transmission. The WaveTunnel technology has the link budget to allow 60 GHz signals to pass through a variety of wall materials when the option to route around them does not exist. The extra link budget is made possible by operating indoors where the range is limited (as is the Free Space Path Loss), and by using a very high-gain (28 dBi) beamforming antenna. The narrower the beam the higher the gain, and the higher the gain the more easily it can blast through walls.
The Airvine WaveTunnel nodes can operate in a ring or spur configuration. The solution is designed to support a range of enterprise use cases including retrofits to support Wi-Fi 6/6E AP’s; environments requiring regular moves, adds, and changes; buildings where is it hard or impossible to pull wire, temporary deployments such as COVID tents, and much more.
Airvine technology competes in the structured wiring market, which exceeds $10 billion a year in revenue worldwide and continues to grow rapidly.
Airvine will begin field trials in the U.S. in November of 2021, with general availbility (GA) to follow in Q1 of 2022.
Airvine won the ”Best Enterprise Wi-Fi Solution” award at the Wi-Fi NOW Awards Ceremony in the fall of 2020 for its ground breaking WaveTunnel solution.
Wi-Fi NOW Blog: The all-wireless enterprise: Blasting through walls @ 60 GHz!
Sivers Semiconductors 5G & WiGig RFICs
