Health Care Systems Oncology, Imaging and Pharmacology, particularly for Prostate Cancer.
Technology that interests me: Sensors (Radar, Sonar, EO/IR,Fusion) Communications, Satellites, Unmanned Vehicles (UAV), Information Technology, Intelligent Transportation
Sunday, November 9, 2014
US carriers consider using M87 wireless mesh technology to expand networks
Smart Phone Ad hoc Networks (SPANs) leverage the existing hardware
(primarily Bluetooth and Wi-Fi) in commercially available smart phones
to create peer-to-peer networks without relying on cellular carrier
networks, wireless access points, or traditional network infrastructure.
SPANs differ from traditional hub and spoke networks, such as Wi-Fi Direct,
in that they support multi-hop relays and there is no notion of a group
leader so peers can join and leave at will without destroying the
network.
Our Client SON™ product unlocks the tremendous latent capacity in
existing mobile devices by adding them to the network infrastructure.
There are currently over one billion smartphones in use worldwide. Our
software adds these smartphones to the network infrastructure, creating a
carrier-grade device to device network that increases both coverage and
capacity without sacrificing security or billing accuracy.
A small Austin startup called M87 thinks
we would all have a better mobile data experience if we’d just share
our phones’ 4G connections with one another. Apparently Qualcomm agrees
with them.
M87 has closed a $3 million Series A round of funding, which included
new strategic investors Qualcomm Ventures and Chinese data center
hosting provide 21Vianet along with M87’s original angel investors.
M87 sprang out of the University of Texas’s wireless engineering department after developing a crowdsourced connectivity technology that
allows nearby phones to link up via Wi-Fi and use each other 3G and 4G
connections to the mobile network. The technology is similar to the crowd mesh-networking technology developed by another emerging networking startup Open Garden, but rather than offer it to consumers, M87 wants to sell it to carriers so they can link their subscribers together.
At first glance, you’d think carriers would be against having their
customers share connections, since selling individual data plans is
their bread and butter. But M87 has developed a way for customers to
share their radios with nearby users without dipping into their own data
plans and without compromising their security.
Imagine walking down the street in your neighborhood and having full
4G LTE connectivity on your device. Also imagine your neighbor walking
on the other side of the street with just 1-2 bars of 4G LTE
connectivity. Would you share some of your connection/bandwidth to help
boost your neighbor’s connection?
Well, get ready as U.S. carriers are testing technology that boosts
mobile download speeds by allowing one person to “borrow” bandwidth from
other devices nearby. In the beginning of 2015 in Hong Kong, 21Vianet
(a Chinese Internet company) will offer
technology deemed “mesh networking” that takes someone with a poor data
signal and connect that signal to a stronger data signal through a
Wi-Fi link.
Why It Matters - We increasingly rely on mobile devices, even though their data connections are often unreliable. The Chinese Internet giant 21Vianet will launch a cell-phone network in Hong Kong early next year
that will use a new trick to offer fast data downloads. When a phone on
the network has a poor data signal, it will borrow the connection of a
nearby handset with a stronger signal by linking with it over Wi-Fi. The
technology, an implementation of a technique known as mesh networking,
may come to other countries, including the United States, soon after.
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