Blu Wireless Technology in Bristol has launched its second generation of technology for high speed wireless that is at the heart of developments of infrastructure for 5G mobile phones and driverless cars

The HYDRA 2.X family of designs will be used by chip makers who want to provide speeds of 10Gbit/s to over 100Gbit/s. It supports many of the features in a new WiFi standard, 802.11ay, such as channel bonding and MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) antennas, to get the higher speeds.

The advantage of the HYDRA design is that it is highly configurable and builds on the expertise of chip designers across Bristol since it was founded in 2009.

The first generation family, HYDRA 1.X, is used in the RWM6050 chip from IDT and includes many pre-11ay features, such as dynamic feature TDMA scheduling, co-channel interference mitigation, accelerated packet aggregation, 64QAM modulation and can achieve 10Gbit/s. This is being used to carry high speed data over wireless rather than using fibre optic cables.

Set to be formally ratified in 2019, 802.11ay, the configurable tech from Blu Wireless allows chip makers to get to market in 2020 with fully certified WiFi products and chips for vehicle-to-vehicle communications.

“By engaging now, our customers will be at the forefront of the next wave of connectivity, able to introduce .11ay solutions to the market ahead of the certification process in 2020,” said Henry Nurser, CEO of Blu Wireless. “Like our customers, we’re already looking beyond pre-11ay to products that can be certified as fully .11ay compliant. By providing customers with the choice as to which .11ay features they want to enable, customers can size their solution to meet the needs of their target markets – whether this be next-generation consumer VR streaming or 5G networking.”

Blu Wireless is in talks with multiple licensees about the technology for telecoms, transport and media applications. It has the backing of processor designer ARM and has raised over £12m so far.

www.bluwirelesstechnology.com

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