Ubiquiti Networks, a leading innovator in outdoor broadband wireless technologies, announced a disruptive global outdoor broadband wireless technology called AirMax.

The technology enables real outdoor TCP/IP speeds of 150+ Mbps and consists of leading edge radio hardware design, carrier class basestation MIMO antennas, and a powerful TDMA protocol that enables speed and network scalability over multi-km link distances. Most importantly, the AirMax solution delivers a price/performance combination that will redefine the economics of outdoor broadband wireless network deployments around the world.

The AirMax TDMA protocol was designed with speed and scalability in mind. Traditionally, the most cost-effective unlicensed band outdoor radio solutions have been based on the 802.11 (or WiFi) standard. While these solutions can provide good results in small scale deployments, they typically degrade exponentially in performance as more clients are added and cause collisions and retransmissions. Ubiquiti’s AirMax technology solves these problems through the use of a hardware accelerated TDMA protocol consisting of a smart polling coordinator with smart scheduling and native VOIP packet detection. The result is a network that can scale to hundreds of clients per basestation while maintaining low latency, high throughput, and uninterrupted voice quality.

Along with this next-generation TDMA protocol implementation, Ubiquiti has introduced a MIMO antenna technology portfolio featuring carrier-class performance with return loss, cross-pol isolation, gain, electrical downtilt, and beam width characteristics typically found in only the highest quality of cellular basestation antennas. The antennas have been designed and field tested to ensure optimized throughput performance while using both the AirMax protocol and 2×2 MIMO radio AirMax hardware.

Ubiquiti has also introduced several AirMax based radio products that allow for powerful and flexible deployment options. The BaseStation platform called The Rocket consists of a rugged, hi-power, wide operating temperature, 802.11n based 2×2 outdoor device which was designed to instantly mate to any of Ubiquiti’s AirMax Antennas. For the station side, Ubiquiti has released the next-generation version of their well-received NanoStation. The new product called NanoStation M is a compact 2×2 MIMO indoor/outdoor CPE capable of 150+ Mbps TCP/IP throughput and can link distances up to 15km. Additionally, Ubiquiti offers the flexible Bullet M radio which can instantly pair to any outdoor antenna to provide link distances beyond 30km and throughput greater than 100Mbps TCP/IP.

“We look at AirMax as the technology that will deliver on the promises of what the WiMax standard was all about. While the WiMax standard incorporated a lot of the performance benefits of our AirMax technology, it hasn’t delivered on the cost points the global markets require to make outdoor network deployments an attractive investment. With AirMax, we took an entirely different development strategy. Instead of starting with a performance requirement, we focused on achieving a strict cost target first and foremost. Then we spent the past several years progressing to the performance requirement, but only while staying within our strict cost target. The task was incredibly challenging, but the result is something the industry has never seen before. Essentially, AirMax enables a multi sectored 300+ capacity 100Mbps+ Basestation to be deployed for magnitudes less than comparable solutions available today,” said Ben Moore VP - Business Development.

Ubiquiti AirMax technology based solutions for the 5GHz unlicensed bands are now shipping. Later this year, many other licensed and unlicensed frequency AirMax based products will be available. For more information, visit www.ubnt.com.