DragonWave Takes New Avenue to Small Cell Deployment

DragonWave, Inc. this week at Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) is promoting a new, sub-6gHz point-to-point microwave radio intended for small cell non-line-of-sight deployments. The new solution is part of the company’s Avenue Link line of products.

Alan Solheim (News - Alert), vice president of corporate development, tells TMCnet that Avenue Link Lite represents the company’s first product in this frequent band. DragonWave believes wireless network operations need a full toolkit of backhaul solutions from which to choose, as each solution has its unique requirements.

The new radio is very low power, at 15 Watts, says Solheim. These devices support MIMO so you can connect two devices for double the capacity, and can be daisy chained to minimize cabling needs.  Each Avenue Link Lite offers 110megs in a single input, or double that with MIMO.

The gear doesn’t look like most traditional products, Solheim adds. Unlike dishes, these devices are relatively small boxes, and are thus easier to mount and less unattractive.

The Avenue products are one of three lines offered by DragonWave (News - Alert). The other two lines are called Harmony and Horizon. DragonWave got Harmony via an acquisition of some NSN assets in June. This line includes multiprotocol radios, indoor units and long-haul trunking radios.

Horizon is a series of outdoor, compact radios that operate in the E band. The line includes the first dual radio product.

DragonWave, says Solheim, differentiates its solutions by leading the market in capacity (with the highest modulation on a lot of its products, supporting full bandwidth compression), network support for ring and mesh network architectures so users can do failovers of redundant networks, and cost; the company claims lower total cost of ownership due to built-in synchronization and its modulation.