Vanu Replacing Cell Tower Equipment With PCs

Dwight Schwartz writes "As reported in an article on the ScienceDaily site, researchers from Vanu, Inc. of Cambridge, MA, have successfully tested a system, the Vanu Software Radio(tm), that can replace a cellular tower's room full of communications hardware with a Pentium-based computer running Linux. The system offers the hope of making cellular technology more affordable for small, rural communities." The systems have been tested for the last several months in parts of Texas, with wider adoption planned for the near future.

Comments

ancient stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a student of telecommunications at an university of technology in Finland, and we've had compact basestations gathering dust at a student lab facility for _years_. (one Nokia and one Siemens, if I remember right)

The unit was about two mid-tower cases of volume, had an integrated PC, integrated antennaes, the whole bunch. Everything you need for a GSM basestation. And it really is an old model. Modern models are at least more efficient (with directional tracking antennaes, etc) and more inconspicious (they can look like fake chimneys, parts of wall, etc, so that it doesn't disturb the landscape.)

Probably we're not even talking about the same things since calling a basestation unit a "tower" is ridiculous. Maybe they've replaced the switching centre with a PC? Though I doubt it, since a PC/Pentium would be severely bandlimited to handle thousands of connections. Perhaps with dedicated hardware which is merely controlled by a PC..