DragonWave Debuts Horizon Quantum Microwave Solution For 4G Services

DragonWave, a provider of packet microwave solutions for mobile and access networks, has unveiled a new microwave solution called Horizon Quantum. This half-rack-unit is optimized for the rollout of 4G services, due to the fact that it increases bandwidth capacity, reduces cost per bit economics, and extends packet microwave features and functions.


In a release, officials at DragonWave (News - Alert) said the company’s carrier-grade point-to-point packet microwave systems transmit broadband voice, video and data. These systems facilitate service providers, government agencies, enterprises and other organizations to meet their increasing bandwidth requirements rapidly as well as affordably. The principal application of company’s solutions is wireless network backhaul.

Supporting sub-0.1-millisecond latencies, DragonWave’s latest offering is a native Ethernet implementation offering up to 4 Gbps per link, which is a record-breaking bandwidth capacity, compared to other legacy microwave solutions.

In the release, Dr. John Saw, chief technology officer of Clearwire (News - Alert), said, "To meet the growing demand for high-speed mobile connectivity, we need increasingly powerful, intelligent and cost-efficient solutions to capitalize on demand for bandwidth intensive and runtime sensitive applications. Horizon Quantum (News - Alert) will help us achieve even higher capacity in our backhaul network to serve the increasingly high-bandwidth demands of our customers."

Horizon Quantum’s small foot print (half-rack-unit device), along with device’s key nodal intelligence feature yields significant cost efficiencies and also facilitates network operations to be dramatically streamlined and simplified. Easy to install and configure, the device can be remotely managed as well, says the company.

Scheduled to ship by the end of 2009, Horizon Quantum delivers interference-free performance in both licensed and unlicensed radio frequencies in the 6 to 38 GHz range. Also featuring integrated switching capability, the device can perform aggregation as well as serve as a switch for ring and mesh network architectures. This helps carriers to reduce the equipment deployed, powered and maintained in their networks.

Moreover, Horizon Quantum includes a bandwidth accelerator that allows the device to achieve superior spectral efficiency -- as well as to redefine the capacity standard for packet microwave.

In addition, DragonWave solution's flexible, user-scalable bandwidth enables simple and remote scaling without truck rolls, thereby providing carriers with key operational cost benefits, says the company.

Also enabling 99.999 percent service reliability, DragonWave’s latest carrier-grade device delivers advanced security and encryption. It completely supports SynchE and other critical Ethernet data transport capabilities such as virtual local area network (VLAN) queuing/prioritization, flow control and jumbo packets. The device also has pseudowire capability that enables Ethernet and Time Division, says company.

In the release, Berge Ayvazian (News - Alert), senior advisor with Yankee Group, said, "Service providers need to be able to deliver more low-latency bandwidth-up to 100 Mbps per site-at a lower cost per bit than has been possible. Horizon Quantum promises to make carrier-grade, high bandwidth native Ethernet transport with the scale required to meet the needs of 4G mobile Internet backhaul."