The Gigaband Solution

Gigaband is creating a patented, proprietary network architecture and technology based on low cost commodity radio technology that eliminates virtually all of the problems experienced with the earlier wireless bandwidth distribution attempts in suburban markets that have been based on either PMP or mesh network architectures. It should be noted however; that Gigaband's technology is agnostic with regard to the type of radio-technology used and can work with radios designed for use with either licensed or free unlicensed spectrum. It is Gigaband's Intelligent Cognitive Mesh (smart) architecture coupled with sophisticated smart antenna technology, and not improved radio technology that produces the high levels of service reliability, availability, and bandwidth density that the industry and consumers seek. Gigaband will always integrate the most advanced radio technology available that has obtained commodity-pricing status with its proprietary network technologies.

The key to Gigaband's Heuristic Cognitive Mesh Network Architecture that produces such outstanding performance and reliability possibilities is to spread "herds" of low cost radios throughout residential neighborhoods. These radios use Gigaband's proprietary antenna, software, and architecture to create narrow high-gain beams that are dynamically aimed towards each other as needed to create switched, high-capacity, point-to-point "circuits in the air". These "air-circuits" act like highly focused searchlight beams that automatically seek out and connect to one another. Additionally, these connections are deterministically managed and coordinated by centralized switching and optimization software that dynamically manages routes, healing around unexpected interference, and handling the detection and spawning of new nodes into the network.

Each node in a Gigaband neighborhood network incorporates a low cost electronically controlled steerable six-sided multi-mode MIMO Beam antenna array using both linearly and circularly polarized antenna elements. Each of the six MIMO-Beam antenna arrays that make up a node are equipped with a separate 802.11ac commodity radio chip. Unlike any other network architecture, these nodes can be dynamically and instantaneously aimed at each other to create switched-path high capacity data pipes through the air. Because high gain steerable MIMO antennas support both ends of each momentary Gigaband connection, the typical link-gain between any two communicating nodes is 20 db. Twenty decibels of link-gain between a pair of radios means that the signal strength between a given pair of radios will be of such quality that a pair of radios located at up to 1 mile apart from one another can transfer as much data as if the radios were 10 feet apart. And, they can do this without increasing the transmit power of the radios beyond the FCC’s allowable low power limits. Using the newest 802.11ac WiFi chips, typical throughput between a pair of communicating nodes is expected to be 200 to 300 Mbps with an upper limit of 400 Mbps.

Gigaband's antennas are designed to ignore signals coming from directions they are not aiming at. The MIMO capabilities actually convert unwanted reflections and ghost signals into a throughput improving advantage. Signals that are not being looked at, are attenuated 20 db and are barely perceptible to the embedded receiver. The antennas also radiate almost no power in directions other than the direction to which they are aiming. They are also polarized differently than consumer WiFi in-home access points. This means a Gigaband antenna/radio on a roof will present little to no interference with a wireless LAN access point (sharing the same frequency) in use inside a home and vice versa.

The Gigaband intelligent switched path model translates into the ability to reuse a single assigned frequency over and over within a neighborhood because, unlike ordinary mesh networks, at any given moment multiple pairs of antennas can simultaneously carry different high capacity data traffic throughout the community on separate non-interfering physical paths. A Gigaband intelligent network benefits from some basic mesh ideas without the limitations of ordinary mesh networking. For instance:

	It effectively utilizes unlicensed spectrum with large service footprints: Like mesh and unlike point-to-multipoint networks, low power radios using unlicensed spectrum can be used. But instead of 100 to 300 feet of distance between nodes, Gigaband's steerable beam antennas aimed at each other to create moment-to-moment switched paths allow the radios to work at full capacity at up to 1 mile apart. Even though the gain of the radios is amplified by the use of steerable directional antennas, radios in use in other directions are not interfered with because of the directionality of the antennas.
	Switched Routes: Like mesh and unlike point-to-multipoint networks, traffic can be relayed around obstacles through multiple user nodes. But much better than conventional mesh, a Gigaband intelligent network can create physically separate air-subnets (at layer 1) for Ethernet connections with individual subnets assigned to individual switched paths in the air.
	Self-Provisioning: Unlike ordinary mesh, an intelligent Gigaband network can be physically reconfigured on the fly. Ordinarily routers, including wireless routers, can only see the other routers in a network that are immediately adjacent to them. The Network Optimizing Server (NOS) in each Gigaband community can see all of the user node routers in the network and can monitor the actual performance of all possible switched paths identified by user nodes. This means that the central processor can make intelligent decisions about switching antennas and routing traffic through the entire neighborhood network. This allows traffic capacity to be balanced throughout the community network avoiding router bottlenecks that plague ad-hoc routed networks. It also means that antennas can be aimed away from recurring sources of third party interference allowing traffic to move through multiple hops to avoid such interference when needed.
	Self-Healing: A Gigaband community network will be self healing in the face of lost nodes or path interference because each antenna node can instantly re-aim itself to switch to pre-calculated alternate physical path when a particular node or path is lost for any reason.
	Power control: Gigaband's network performance will be further improved by using radios that allow dynamic adjustments to the receive-sensitivity and transmit-power of node radios. With these capabilities, radios in the Grid can be placed at widely variable distances from each other. When radios that are close together connect to each other, a user node's transmitted power and/or sensitivity can be reduced by the node's processor to further reduce interference with other node radios that are not part of that particular air-switched subnet. This allows subscriber density to be scaled indefinitely--something that is not possible with either mesh or point-to-point network solutions.
	Low-profile base stations: Unlike point-to-point networks Gigaband's traffic aggregation hub in a Gigaband community is called a Community Hub. It is very low cost and can be mounted at rooftop level rather than requiring ugly expensive towers and time consuming regulatory approvals. Each forty five-degree service sector served by a Gigaband Community Hub can share up to 400 Mbps of throughput between as few as 50 subscribers; whereas in point-to-multipoint service networks, the same 400 Mbps capacity would often be shared among hundreds of users yielding very low average throughputs for individual users. When Community Hub capacity is consumed by adding subscribers, it is a simple and low cost matter to add another Community Hub to expand the capacity available to subscribers in the community.