Ikanos Communications, a developer of advanced broadband semiconductor and software products has introduced NodeScale Vectoring, a breakthrough DSL access technology that will enable 100 megabit per second (Mbps) performance, speeds that were previously unattainable in the vast majority of service provider networks. By using this new technology service providers will be able to extend very high-speed Internet access and new critical services - including multiple high-definition television streams, distance learning, video conferencing, telemedicine, and more – without having to incur the high costs of installing complete fiber-to-the-home networks.
"NodeScale Vectoring technology will deliver the performance of fiber at one-tenth the cost of fiber-to-the-home," according to John Quigley, CEO and president at Ikanos. "With NodeScale Vectoring, we believe that service providers will save billions of dollars on broadband deployments by delivering high-speed, highly reliable Internet access and premium services over their existing copper infrastructure." The complete system includes NodeScale Vectoring compatible line cards, Vector Computation Engines and G.vector-ready customer premises equipment. The system can be deployed flexibly to increase the performance of existing VDSL nodes, as part of ADSL network upgrades and in copper plants that previously served only plain old telephone service (POTS). Since the same Ikanos chipset supports vectored and non-vectored deployments, upgrades can occur on a line-by-line basis for a pay-as-you-go vectored network deployment. Ikanos' NodeScale Vectoring complies with the International Telecommunication Union standards group (ITU-T) G.vector standard (G.993.5), which provides for dynamic spectrum management level 3 (DSM-3) through the use of advanced crosstalk cancellation techniques.
One of the challenges in deploying very-high-speed Internet access over existing infrastructure is the degradation that occurs as a result of crosstalk between coincident copper wire pairs. Each wire can often and intermittently interfere with neighbouring wires, thereby introducing noise, limiting line quality and reducing VDSL performance. Other impediments including AM radio signals, power lines, lightning and other atmospheric elements inject even more noise into the copper network.
Ikanos' NodeScale Vectoring technology analyses the crosstalk and interference environment in real time and creates a unique set of compensation signals that effectively eliminates both. In fact, NodeScale Vectoring is able to cancel noise across an entire network node from 192 to 384 ports or more, meeting the deployment requirements of the world’s leading service providers. Handling crosstalk at that level presents a massive computational challenge requiring Gigabits of memory. With Ikanos' patent-pending algorithms, compression and coding techniques, service providers can deliver 100 Mbps performance at the scale necessary to support their growing subscriber bases via a cost-effective commercial silicon and software solution.
