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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.
This is excellent. I live in South Africa, and there is a massive gulf between the poor and the few rich - this will help to connect all the poor people, and especially the ones in rural areas.
What makes me the happiest of all, is that the system runs Linux, and this is great in the light of the fact that the South African government has articulated its commitment to open source software (they have indicated that they may replace several government systems with Linux boxes! so I hope that it happenes)
It just shows what a bit of ingenuity can do.
"I hate people who fabricate unintelligent quotes to add to their work seemingly by some 'anon' sage" -- anon
Have a look at the original release from the US National Science Foundation. With some nice pictures. :-)
Not only will this allow cellular rollouts in poorer countries, expect to start seeing this in small pico cell sites across the world. I work for a company that produces network management software, and I know how complex a rollout process for single cell site is. The lists of equipment are huge and costly, and we have an entire set of modules that allow companies to keep track of the hardware in each site and its configuration. In short, cells sites are complex, costly to build and hard to maintain.
Replacing all of that with a tower, antenna and a PC would be a huge saving, both in terms of planing, installation and maintainence. A single site could be rolled out in a matter of weeks, rather than months, and cost a fraction of what it costs now.
For us in Europe, maybe it could help reduce costs and get the debt-laden operators back on their feet. For those of you in the US, you could well see much better coverage on all networks.
GSM is pretty low-bandwidth stuff (around 13kbps). Further, the line cards handle a lot of the framing and general cookery for the interconnects (whether it's a wired E1, or microwave, or whatever). So even a fairly low-end Pentium would handle a few calls. The article does say that it needs a fairly large Linux server, but an ordinary PC would work for a relatively small node. The Digitalk telephone switches we use are really just dual PII-500 machines, and they handle 120 simultaneous wired calls.
Assuming using a PC can't give redundancy and resilience against failures is extremely presumptious. But for areas that currently don't have ANY coverage, even a desktop PC powered base station would be an improvement.
The article seems to basically be saying "we've reduced the amount of kit you need to run a cell" - I'm sure it just removes a tiny portion of the kit needed to set one up though. The article mentions that previously emergency and public calls used separate kit, and that this system uses a PC instead.
So, my bets are: it's replacing a bunch of routers by becoming a software-based router itself, and doesn't handle calls, but merely switches between networks based on call type. All of the other equipment in the cell will still be required. So in essence it reduces the cost, but by no means reduces a cell node to one PC with an aerial sticking out of it.
So the linux boxes are cheap. What about the interconnect equipment? Can a guy off the street spend a few hundred and build his own phone network, or is the marginal cost still significant?
:)
Hell, if it's cheap enough, I'll start my own wireless phone company
Hardware is generally far more difficult to compromise than software, esp' a known operating system (regardless of how much more secure it may be than other cough, doze, boxes) You'd want some very secure remote access if at all. Otherwise you could find yourself with a whole bunch of phones ringing a la lawn-mower man style in a country town near you.
I'm originally from Stephenville, Texas - just down the road from these two communities. There are no third-generation networks available out there. My Sprint PCS phone doesn't work there, either - not even in analog mode. But just 20 miles away I have full signal strength in Vision mode.
I still have some friends in the region using Mid-Tex, and they haven't mentioned anything odd about their service. I guess that means it's a success as far as consumers are concerned.
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..
The poster should have included this link (pdf) - much more interesting.
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