Microwave Journal
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GenXComm

UT Horizon Fund Invests in GenXComm to Full Duplex Technology

June 20, 2017

GenXComm has closed a fully-subscribed round of seed financing, with investments from the UT Horizon Fund and other investors. The financing will provide the capital to pursue the commercialization of the company's full-duplex technology, including key hires, engagements with strategic partners and applying the technology to various applications and markets.

GenXComm, whose origins trace back to The University of Texas at Austin electrical engineering department, says the company has solved one of the most challenging wireless communication problems — how to achieve the full use and near 100 percent effectiveness of any wireless and wired spectrum. Networks today must either transmit and receive at different frequencies at the same time or at different times at the same frequency. Multiple transmitters must be spaced apart to avoid interfering with one another. GenXComm says their robust, simultaneous, self-interference cancellation (S-SIX) technology "unleashes the full potential of the spectrum used for today’s 5G mobile, Wi-Fi and cable networks by allowing channels to be stacked one next to the other with no empty spectrum between them."

The benefits of the company's patented technology include doubling the effectiveness of the available spectrum by enabling talk while listen, and increasing network performance up to 30x for dense environments, while maintaining full backwards compatibility. GenXComm’s patented S-SIX technology operates under harsh real world conditions, allowing its use in a stadium, between tall buildings or anywhere people connect, live, work and play. GenXComm’s technology enables multiple transmitters to coexist side-by-side, enabling life without interference.

The S-SIX technology has been demonstrated over an 800 MHz bandwidth in the lab, and over a 100 MHz bandwidth in the field showing its wideband capability. GenXComm's team first demonstrated full duplex using S-SIX over a 20 MHz band at 2.4 GHz with 100 Mbps bi-directional data (resulting in an overall throughput of 200Mbps). Subsequently, the company demonstrated a 100 MHz real-time full duplex link at 24 GHz (mmWave radio) with a 1 Gbps data rate. And more recently, the company has demonstrated an outdoor integrated access and backhaul solution, operating with a 100 MHz bandwidth. This solution is capable of operating access and wireless backhaul at the same frequency, eliminating the need for a fiber backhaul.

GenXComm’s technology, operating today in their development lab, demonstrates that wireless devices can finally evolve to their full potential. Often referred to as the “Holy Grail” in communications, GenXComm S-SIX technology enables robust full-duplex communications and full use of the available spectrum, just as carriers are planning their 5G cellular networks to cope with a flood of new wireless devices and rapidly increasing data demands on wireless networks.

“There is an immediate opportunity to dramatically enhance the user experience in key markets by leveraging GenXComm’s innovative simultaneous self-interference cancellation technology,” said Sriram Vishwanath, co-founder and president of GenXComm. “Consumers want to live a life without interference and at least from a technology perspective, GenXComm will allow them to do so. The limited availability of new spectrum and its effectiveness for wireless communications are key factors plaguing cellular network operators and any wireless system facing exponential growth in data usage. We are already working with market leaders across 5G and IoT markets to radically change their users’ experiences with improvements in densification, throughput and security. Stated more simply, our customers now have an effective way to use all their spectrum, under real world conditions and in the most efficient way possible, to better serve their customers.”

“GenXComm is focused on commercializing a UT-based technology with massive potential,” said Nick Tulloh, Senior Investment Analyst with the UT Horizon Fund, “With the increasing adoption of IOT devices and streaming services representing an increasing portion of mobile internet traffic, data demands are outpacing network capabilities. GenXComm plans to deliver quality and capacity improvements across the whole spectrum of networked devices.”