Cohere Technologies, which last week announced new investment and a trial with Bell Canada, has this week announced a new software product called DNA, and the appointment of two big hitters to its board.
The sofware product is called Dynamic Network Alignment (DNA). It is designed to be able to perform beam forming calibrations that adapt to antenna performance and other variables that affect performance.
Cohere has an existing solution it calls Universal Spectrum Multiplier that leverages technology it developed that can predict channel conditions for MIMO beam forming, increasing performance and capacity. In deploying USM in field trials it found out that real world conditions, changes in weather, and differences in calibrations between different makes of antenna, affected the performance of systems in which USM was being deployed. DNA is the fix for that – it is a software set that analyses ongoing conditions and then makes adapations for that.
“We could build a table with the variances of all antennas in the world, or we could build software that would adapt to the antenna,” a Cohere spokesperson told TMN. “DNA delivers a way to continuously maintain calibration of antenna infrastructure. It understands anenna variances, for example as the antenna contracts and expands, or other little effects that change the phase of the signal, and then compensates for that in the PHY layer.”
While the DNA software forms a part of the overall USM solution, it can also be licensed separately as a standalone enhancement. Cohere’s aim is to focus on beam-forming for 4T/4R MIMO, delivering spatial MU-MIMO (Multi-User Mimo) to existing antennas in the field, thereby increasing capacity. Cohere thinks that operators could gain spectral advantage in lower band spectrum in rural and suburban areas, where they have not deployed mid-band 5G (C-Band in the USA).
Although the DNA solution doesn’t require operators to swap out antennas, it does need to be deployed in the RAN baseband at the DU, or as an xApp in a near real time O-RAN RIC. Like the USM product, then, it would fit well within the O-RAN architecture, but it could also be licensed to radio OEMs,Cohere said.
Wibergh and Mital join board
Johan Wibergh, now on the Cohere Technologies board, along with Amit Mital.
Meanwhile the company annouced two big names to its board. The first is ex-Vodafone CTO and ex-head of radio networks at Ericsson, Johan Wibergh. Wibergh obviously brings a detailed knowledge of radio networks from both the OEM and operator side, having only formally left Vodafone in December 2022.
He is joined by Amit Mital, CEO and founder of Kernel Labs, and EVP/GM and CTO at Symantec Corporation, and Special Assistant to the President of the United States and Senior Director, National Security Council from 2021 to August 2022.
