Orthogon Systems is ascribing to the "fatter the pipe the better" philosophy. It released today a new wireless Ethernet bridge that it claims will put out 300 Mb/s of throughput in real world conditions.

Called OS-Spectra, the technology is a juggernaut compared to its OS-Gemini product, achieving significant gains not just in overall capacity but also in spectral efficiency. Both OS-Gemini operate over the 5.8 GHz unlicensed bands, but while OS-Gemini is putting out 33 Mb/s over a 12 MHz band, OS-Spectra pumps an amazing 300 Mb/s over 30 MHz. That breaks down to roughly 10 bits per hertz.

"That’s 300% to 400% better than other top-end radios," said Orthogon CEO Phil Bolt. "It’s the most spectrally efficient radio on the market."

While that spectral efficiency may seem like a moot point when talking about the unlicensed bands, Bolt said it will have a significant impact as WiMax is deployed. Systems operating over the same 5.8 MHz bands will be carrying a lot of data which will need to be backhauled while conserving the overall capacity of the access network. OS-Spectra’s benefits will come in its scalability, providing backhaul for as many as 12 WiMax base station sectors over the equivalent of only three 10 MHz WiMax channels.

Even outside of the WiMax space, Bolt expects a significant market for its workhorse product. Many of its enterprise customers are already laying two OS-Gemini bridges side-by-side, Bolt said. OS-Spectra could not only replace those systems, but target the largest enterprises both in campus and intra-city links, but in some cases intra-city backhaul. OS-Spectra has a range of up to 125 miles. In addition, Bolt expects there to be a significant opportunity for OS-Spectra in the healthcare and research sectors. "Those institutions tend to be data hogs," Bolt said. "They don’t want to go through the cost of laying fiber. They either have to go with free space optics or us."

Like its popular OS-Gemini point-to-point bridge, OS-Spectra uses Orthogon’s multi-beam space-time coding technology, which overcomes signal strength and fading problems associated with non-line-of-site (NLOS) systems. Bolt said an individual obstacle such as a tree could cause a signal to drop to 1/100 of its original strength as a standard NLOS system creates multiple signal paths to bypass the obstacle. In addition, those multiple paths are prone to be out-of-phase since they don’t follow a straight line between transceivers, canceling each other out and further compromising a connection. Orthogon’s multi-beam technology, however, sends multiple data streams from multiple transmitters. The individual signals will be subject to the same fading problems but in different periods, far increasing the chances that one or more of the streams will make a connection. At the receiving end, Orthogon’s software evaluates each signal stream and reconstructs and resequences the data image from those combinations of signals.