SkyPilot Networks and Fujitsu Microelectronics America Inc. recently announced that SkyPilot has selected the Fujitsu WiMAX System-on-Chip (SoC) IC for a new generation of systems that will bring sophisticated mesh networking to WiMAX deployments. The company says it is the first to announce plans to add mesh networking to WiMAX infrastructures. SkyPilot said it will provide multi-hop, multi-link, multi-path and multi-base station connectivity that offers a breadth of coverage, performance and fault-tolerance capabilities not available with point-to-multipoint deployments.

"Our existing broadband wireless mesh architecture is extremely well suited to support evolving WiMAX standards," said Brian Jenkins, vice president of product management at SkyPilot. "The SkyPilot systems that our service provider customers are deploying in production mesh networks already include most of the technologies defined by WiMAX, including the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique and the time-division duplex (TDD) transmission protocol. With the Fujitsu WiMAX SoC, we're leveraging a high-performance chip with the flexibility to incorporate our Synchronous Mesh Protocol while maintaining compatibility with standards-based WiMAX clients."

SkyPilot is working with the Fujitsu MB87M3400 SoC to provide WiMAX mesh networking infrastructure solutions for the 2.3-GHz to 2.7-GHz, 3.3-GHz to 3.8-GHz, and 5.x-GHz frequency bands. The SkyPilot product line will provide dual interoperability for standard Wi-Fi and WiMAX clients, and will maintain SkyPilot's heritage of superior RF management through interference mitigation and spectral reuse.

In another announcement, SkyPilot declared a partnership with MetroFi, a leader in designing, building and operating wireless broadband networks. MetroFi is using SkyPilot equipment to provide municipalities with an "all-in" metropolitan Wi-Fi access solution at $50,000/square mile that establishes a new, breakthrough price/performance standard.

To address the licensed U.S. public safety markets and other international frequencies, SkyPilot is expanding coverage with the addition of support for the 4.9-GHz frequency band. In the United States, this allows government agencies to deploy a 4.9-GHz mesh backhaul with Wi-Fi access for dedicated first-responder services.

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