Neul launches world’s first production white space radio system

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND: Neul, a company offering products and services for the globally emerging TV white space spectrum, announced the launch of NeulNET.

NeulNET is the first production wireless radio system that is designed to use free, high quality white space spectrum, delivering fast, reliable wireless connections over long distances. NeulNET promises to revolutionise machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, local broadband delivery, smart meter communications and the ‘internet of everything’. The NeulNET system is available to order now.

White space radio takes advantage of unused TV channels as we switch from analogue TV to digital TV. Signals in these frequencies can travel long distances and easily penetrate walls. This makes white space radio ideal for long-range applications that require wide-area connectivity.

There is up to 150MHz of high quality white space spectrum available. For comparison, typical nationwide 3G networks operate with a mere 30MHz of spectrum, and while 3G spectrum costs $bns, white space spectrum will be available free of charge. To use white space systems must meet very stringent technical specifications to prevent interference with television equipment and wireless microphones. NeulNET is the first wireless system to meet these conditions, including the FCC’s challenging adjacent channel power specification.

The NeulNET system, which includes a basestation unit and portable battery powered terminal, makes it easy to create white space networks that deliver up to 16Mbps per available white space channel at a range of up to 10km.

Neul technology delivers the full potential of white space radio spectrum for fast-growing applications such as local broadband delivery and Machine to Machine (M2M) communications. There are already over 200 million M2M devices and this number is rising with a 23 percent CAGR. But the M2M market is set to explode, with applications such as in-car navigation, telematics, retail electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) and others. The number of connected devices is expected to reach 50 billion by 2020. This network of billions of connected devices is often referred to as ‘the internet of everything’.

“For many M2M applications, modems using cellular (2G and 3G) technology are too expensive and/or consume way too much power,” commented Allen Nogee, research director at In-Stat, and a keen observer of M2M and white space trends. “Neul’s very novel M2M solution, using available white space spectrum, is a perfect solution for those applications requiring a low-cost, ultra-reliable connection that consumes very little power and supports very high device densities and capacities.

“Neul aims to unite parties interested in white space by presenting compelling technology, an industry standard, and a vision of how the white space spectrum can best be used. This industry needs a new holistic approach. Given the enormous technical and business acumen of the team, I see a bright future ahead for white space and for Neul.”

NeulNET is based on a new wireless standard: Weightless. Neul is working with industry leaders to develop Weightless into an open, royalty-free standard, and will make the specification available to companies interested in developing M2M products through membership of the Weightless Special Interest Group (SIG).

“White space delivers a huge amount of much-needed new capacity to meet the current and future needs of the M2M market,” commented James Collier, CEO of Neul. “But it presents significant technical challenges. In order to utilise the enormous potential of white space, the industry needs low-cost radios based on an industry standard. NeulNET radios, built around the new Weightless standard deliver this. Neul is at the forefront of white space developments, enabling, developing and defining the future local broadband and M2M networks.”