Comments on: xMax, yet another rural broadband wireless technology?

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:44:30 +0000

I just wonder if that $5 chip is for a receive only type of service. Anyway, the expensive part is not going to be the logic, it is going to be the highly linear power amplifier you need and those things cost major bucks.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:07:56 +0000

jesse they talk about a quarter-million-dollar base station and $5 chips for the client side devices. that is the extent of the information on their website. it does seem like credible science fiction, but who knows. at some point folks did talk about flarion as SF as well. the team however makes me wonder and gives me a reason to pause. the financiers also are kind of unknown.

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 22:53:57 +0000

Fascinating. This seems similar to ultrawideband. The idea is that the pilot is narrowband and operated at a low frequency for range, while the carrier is ultrawidebanded and operated at such a low power that it is indistinguishable from thermal noise. The pilot “key” will have to be long enough to provide the incredible ammounts of coding gain required to turn the carrier from noise into data. It smacks of good science fiction, far fetched yet theoretically possible. I don’t see any issues at the base-station end for doing something like this, they could be nice and expensive for the kind of range they deliver, but what about the terminal? Can you pull something like this off in $200 PCMCIA card?