Ikanos Preps NodeScale Vectoring to Boost Internet Access to 100 Mbps and Beyond

Advanced broadband semiconductor solutions provider Ikanos Communications, Inc., has readied patent pending NodeScale Vectoring technology to enable 100 megabits per second (Mbps) and higher DSL access speed capability. By deploying Ikanos' (News - Alert) state-of the-art NodeScale Vectoring, service providers will be able to extend very high-speed Internet access and new critical services - including multiple HDTV streams, distance learning, video conferencing, telemedicine, and more – without having to incur the high costs of installing complete fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, claimed Ikanos.

"Ikanos' NodeScale Vectoring technology will deliver the performance of fiber at one-tenth the cost of fiber-to-the-home," stated John Quigley, CEO and president at Ikanos, in a company statement. "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."

One of the challenges in deploying very-high-speed Internet access over existing infrastructure is the degradation due to crosstalk between coincident copper wire pairs. Each wire can often and intermittently interfere with neighboring 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 algorithm analyzes the crosstalk and other interferences in real-time and creates a unique set of compensation signals that effectively eliminates both. In fact, NodeScale Vectoring cancels noise across an entire network node from 192 to 384 ports or more, meeting the deployment requirements of the world’s leading service providers, according to the developer. Handling crosstalk at that level presents a massive computational challenge requiring Gigabits of memory. With Ikanos' unique and 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, said the maker.

NodeScale Vectoring was designed from inception to address the need for delivering 100 Mbps performance reliably across an entire service provider network. 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), Ikanos said. 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, noted Ikanos.

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 (News - Alert)-3) through the use of advanced crosstalk cancellation techniques.

This week at Broadband World Forum, ZTE (News - Alert) Corp. will demonstrate the first DSLAM employing Ikanos’ standards-based NodeScale Vectoring technology. It will be on display in ZTE's booth, number E1, during the exhibition, Oct. 26 to 28, at the CNIT La Defense in Paris, France.