SBIR Phase II: Ubiquitous Landline-Based Long-Reach Broadband Access

这一小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的目标是以低成本大幅增加现有铜线固定电话基础设施的宽带接入吞吐量和距离。特别是，正在开发的技术在干扰占主导地位的郊区/农村环境中具有优势。仅在美国，就有数百万家庭目前无法获得宽带接入，其中通常有多个铜固定电话可用，并且全球对这种解决方案的需求明显更高。对于这些服务不足的用户来说，这种创新的延伸解决方案是唯一的低成本宽带接入替代昂贵，低效的卫星覆盖。虽然现有的数字用户线（DSL）解决方案没有规定提供宽带接入在非常长的距离，该公司？的新解决方案大大增加了可实现的距离，并允许宽带速率（1 Mbps），以提供在扩展范围内，如本项目的第一阶段所示。该技术将创新的信号处理算法与新颖的数字实现架构相结合，以实现高性能、低复杂性和低功耗的实现。这一项目的更广泛影响和商业潜力在于为目前宽带接入无法覆盖的许多家庭提供负担得起的宽带服务，并提高其他基于铜线的应用程序的性能。该技术将使电信运营商能够在有线服务存在的地区更好地竞争，并可以增强现有的基于铜线的回程解决方案，从而帮助服务提供商解决与无线流量增加相关的回程瓶颈问题。对这类解决方案的需求不断增长，有可能产生约5000万美元的年收入，这代表着一个巨大的商机。社会效益包括为以前无法接通的家庭提供宽带服务，从而使他们能够从事远程教育、电子商务和远程办公，以及这些带来的所有优势。我们与本地大学持续进行的合作研究，有助引导这方面的学术研究，切合服务提供者的实际需要和兴趣，从而推动通信理论和电路设计等相关范畴的发展，并让学生参与这项研究。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project targets significantly increased throughputs and distances for broadband access over the existing copper landline infrastructure at low cost. In particular, the technology being developed offers advantages in interference-dominated and in suburban/rural environments. In the USA alone there are many millions of households that are currently out-of-reach of broadband access, where there are typically multiple copper landlines available, and the global demand for such solution is significantly higher. For these underserved subscribers, this innovative extended-reach solution represents the only low-cost broadband access alternative to costly, inefficient satellite coverage. While existing Digital-Subscriber-Line (DSL) solutions are not specified to provide broadband access at very long distances, the company?s novel solution greatly increases the achievable distances and allows broadband rates (1Mbps) to be delivered at extended ranges, as demonstrated in Phase 1 of this project. The technology combines innovative signal-processing algorithms with novel digital implementation architectures to allow for high-performance reduced-complexity and low current-consumption implementations. The broader impact and commercial potential of this project are in enabling affordable broadband service to the many households, which are currently out of the reach of broadband access, and in enhancing the performance of other copper-based applications. The technology will enable telco providers to better compete in areas where cable service exists, and can enhance existing solutions for copper-based backhaul, thereby helping service providers with the growing problem of backhaul bottlenecks associated with increased wireless traffic. The growing demand for solutions of this type has the potential to generate annual revenues on the order of $50M, representing a great business opportunity. Societal benefits include providing broadband service to previously-unreachable homes, thus allowing them to engage in remote education, e-commerce, and telecommuting, with all of the advantages that these entail. Ongoing collaborative research with local universities is serving to steer academic research in this field towards the actual needs and interests expressed by service providers, thus advancing the related fields in communication theory and circuitry design and involving students in this research.