Airspan Partners With McLaren Electronics for 4G Connectivity

Looking to offer a customized 4G connectivity solution for motorsport and other transportation industries, Airspan Networks has announced a joint product development partnership with McLaren Electronics Systems.

Delivering broadband speeds exceeding 5 Mbps per car at speeds beyond 200 mph (320 km/h), the solution supports multiple cars simultaneously. The Airspan solution consists of 4G Radio Access Network (RAN) technology deployed trackside and an Airspan 4G module (mini PCIe) embedded directly into a ruggedized McLaren Electronics component (WMX-470), which is installed in the race car, the company stated in a press release.

“Airspan is delighted to join McLaren Electronics in the development of this motorsport and transportation industry solution," commented Paul Senior, Chief Technical Officer of Airspan. "This project highlights Airspan's technical strength in 4G technologies and demonstrates our ability to innovate and deliver a solution into one of the world's most demanding communication environments. The solution we have created together with McLaren Electronics breaks new ground by delivering high speed uplink broadband connections in a high-speed radio environment.”

Offering considerable capacity at extremely high travel speeds, the joint Airspan/McLaren Electronics unit (CBM-470) is specially developed to be easily incorporated into a wide variety of transportation vehicles and the solution can be adjusted to operate in a number of frequency bands. Specifically designed to deliver 4G mobile connectivity to the transportation industry, Airspan's viaNET4G is an enhanced member of the product family. To enable direct connectivity from that component to the AirSynergy base station, the 4G mini PCIe module included in the solution is designed to be easily embedded in any component.

In 2009, the company announced that it has received FCC certification for its WiMAX products to operate over the full 50 MHz of the FCC 3.65 GHz lightly licensed frequency band. With this approval, Airspan said becomes the first WiMAX vendor to support full 50 MHz in key frequency allocation. This certification will help 3.65 GHz operators in the United States to utilize the upper “unrestricted” 25 MHz. This will afford them with additional capacity, range, flexibility and deployment options.