To expand its sales and engineering resources in the United States and China, embedded cognitive radio software developer Propagate Networks has obtained about $8 million additional financing in a series C venture funding. While planning to add more sales personnel in the United States, the company intends to double its engineering staff in China to effectively support the OEMs in the region. Strategic investors in the third round include Motorola Ventures and Thomas Weisel Venture Partners. Thus, to date, Acton, Mass.-based start-up Propagate Networks has raised about $14 million in venture funding.

The company has developed a lightweight, cognitive radio software package for wireless LAN (WLAN) access points and clients (desktops, laptops, PDAs, cordless phones, home entertainment systems) called AutoCell. Launched last year, this patent-pending firmware is designed to create self-configuring wireless networks that automatically avoid RF interference. It is embedded in 802.11 access points (APs) and optionally in clients (802.11 stations) to form a completely automatic, continuously running, self-organizing network. Current Propagate partners include major WiFi players such as Netgear, Atheros Communications and Chantry Networks.

“Propagate is committed to making the WiFi experience as painless as possible so business and home users can simply plug in a new access point and never worry about performance brownouts, neighboring interference and administrative headaches,” said Gary Vacon, CEO of Propagate Networks. “We look forward to working closely with our investment partners to bring AutoCell closer to ubiquity and making it the de facto standard in all WiFi-enabled consumer and business products.”

“Motorola is always strengthening its focus on new wireless networking technologies and it is important that our customers, at home or in the enterprise, enjoy the wireless environments they’re creating,” said Matthew I. Growney, managing director of Motorola Ventures. “Propagate’s AutoCell software addresses quality of service issues simplistically, and we expect that our relationship with Propagate will provide Motorola with enormous benefit as a technology partner.”

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