SBIR Phase I: Self and Alien Crosstalk Cancellation for Copper-Based Cellular and Access Backhaul

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project targets increased data throughputs in cellular and access backhaul networks that are based on copper twisted-pairs to address the ever-growing demand for capacity and the consequent bottlenecks that are experienced in them. The performance in the multi-twister-pair channels is limited by crosstalk and interference caused by various sources in their noisy environment. The technology to be developed in this Phase I project offers significant increases in throughput through cost-effective interference-mitigation mechanisms. The company?s key innovation is in low-latency dynamic interference cancellation algorithms, which greatly enhance system performance while maintaining acceptable implementation complexity. The project will involve both research and development at the algorithmic level, as well as system implementation challenges associated with the minimization of the system?s cost and power consumption. More specifically, the innovation includes novel approaches to training-sequence design and numerically-robust schemes for the mitigation of both self-induced crosstalk as well as unpredictable crosstalk originating from other systems sharing the cable of twisted pairs (alien interference). Based on preliminary results, it is anticipated that this technology will offer critically needed throughput enhancements ranging from a factor of 2 to a factor of 5, depending on the operating scenario.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project would be in enabling low-cost broadband services to a greater part of the population and thus also in fostering remote education, telecommuting and e-commerce. About 80% of the cell towers in the US utilize copper twisted-pairs for their backhaul, and the equipment market, valued at $5.6B in 2009, is expected to grow to $11.2B by 2013 due to deployment of bandwidth-intensive smart-phones and cellular Internet offerings. Hence, the relevant market sectors directly impacted are chip and communications equipment manufacturing. Many new micro-cells and femto-cells, offering wireless access in a coverage area smaller than that of a typical cell tower, are being deployed to offer wireless broadband coverage while relying on cooper-based backhaul. The copper infrastructure typically suffers capacity limitations and is interference-dominated while the higher-capacity alternatives, fiber and microwave, are costly and slow to deploy. The interference-mitigation technology enabling this breakthrough, developed in collaboration with the University of Texas at Dallas, may be applicable in other multi-channel communication systems, and can serve, for example, to better utilize scarce wireless spectrum.