Linux to power cellular radio tower of Babel
Dec 14, 2007 — by Eric Brown — from the LinuxDevices Archive — 2 viewsA Virginia-based company offering radio protocol conversion products for telecom infrastructure has reportedly licensed Enea's soup-to-nuts carrier-grade Linux and high-availability middleware suite. Enea says 4DK will use the “Enea Accelerator Platform” with its “SuperConnectivity” product, apparently aimed at enabling telecom infrastructure to support multiple cellular protocols.
4DK is said to have signed a five-year license agreement with Enea, including hiring Enea Professional Services. Coincidentally, Enea recently expanded its Linux service offering.
4DK's SuperConnnectivity
Giving no hint whether it comprises hardware, software, and/or middleware, 4DK describes its SuperConnectivity product as a “patent pending product suite for service disaggregation and recombination.” This seems to be a fancy way of saying that the product tries to get divergent wireless standards to play nice with one another by converting everything to IP (Internet protocol). A side benefit is the enablement of interoperation with traditional IP-based services, such as VoIP and WiFi.
4DK did not respond to multiple requests for information prior to publication time.
Enea's Accelerator Platform comprises in-house and third-party products for both ends of the mobile phone market's virtual wire, targeting VoIP, IPTV, broadband Internet, gaming, and streaming video services. Components include:
Enea Element architecture diagram
In October, 4DK announced a partnership with Cyren Call Communications to jointly consult with the Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corporation (PSST) on bidding for the upper 700MHz D Block license set aside for a public safety channel on the upcoming U.S. wireless broadband network. Bidding is set to start in January on the newly-available spectrum.
Stated Tamara Casey, CEO at 4DK, “Enea's software gives us carrier grade reliability, streamlines the integration with the ATCA system, and provides us with a platform on which we can innovate. We expect the Enea platform to shorten our critical development time by at least six months.”
Enea's proprietary RTOS, called OSE, is deployed in approximately half of the world's 3G mobile phones and base stations, says the company; yet in recent years, Enea has been increasingly focused on Linux implementations.
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