Hey guys, I'm brand new to this forum, but far from brand new to the sUAS industry. I've been a engineer and developer in this arena since about 2012. I wanted to hop into this discussion to get some insight and exposure for some of the stuff I've been working on. I'm the Chief Innovations Officer at Fenix Group Solutions out here in D.C. I wanted to expose you guys (hopefully reaching the developer community) to VCore. VCore is a fully virtualized 4G LTE core network in the form factor of about a NUK computer. This product is the worlds smallest, lightest, and most inexpensive 4G LTE eNode B(cell tower) and Core Network.
What does this mean kinda in layman's terms? This is verizon/AT&T/T-mobile/etc in a box. They come in 250mw, 2w, and 5w systems that create a fully functional (3gpp standard) LTE network you control. The 5w systems create literally 10's of kilometers of range, and 100mp/s of bandwidth. The whole system IP based, being full LTE. Think WiFi on steroids. Our systems allow you to literally connect 1000's of drones to a single core network and common control station, allows for full streaming of HD video, telemetry, and situational awareness. The biggest application for this is probably the dev and educational research bodies here in the community. Being LTE, our nodes are fully mesh network capable, are backhaul agnostic (once connected to the internet, it functions like any other LTE network with internet access, etc). Our systems come with their own SIM cards, and just need to be popped into a 4G dongle on a piggyback computer such as the VOLTA Robot's systems to be able to participate in the network. Since the whole network is connected internally, OpenVPN isnt necessary to connect to any of the nodes. This type of system has massive implications for swarm behavior and distributed sensor networking.
Now obviously (at least here in the states) the FCC controls cell phone band's and licenses (which arent too cheap :( ) are required for operations of our systems. I wanted to hop into this community to raise some awareness of where this technology is going and how we can enable and empower drones in the future.
What are some of the use cases you guys out there could dream up for this system? Information on the system can be found on our website http://www.fenixgroupsolutions.com/products-1 . For folks wanting a little more indepth and technical presentation please feel free to reach out to me at sschaner@fenixgroupsolutions.com.
Cheers, and be well!
-s
Replies
Thanks Stephan - certainly a very interesting alternative.
So to legally transmit over LTE, bandwidth has to be purchased from whatever governing body exists in your geographic location. Most places have small time cellular carriers that purchase out bandwidth for smaller operations. For example, here in the states, we have to have a purchased allocation on band 17 to dev and operate our systems. A small over view of bands is available here:
In terms of antennas, LTE is built on a MIMO RF structure. The options for antennas are pretty robust, and depend on what frequency in the specific band you'll be using. Our systems use blade style antennas on our smaller systems (250mw and 2 w) and larger panel style antennas on our 5 watt. These antennas come with the systems, but all have the ability to use external or custom antennas.
In terms of what systems come with, its a complete package. So the core(actual virtualized cellphone network), eNode B (the radio, or cell tower), sim cards, antennas, and all power cables come with the system. The required end user equipment (i.e cell phones, LTE dongles, etc) have to be purchased separately, but we can include that in packages. Everything is scale-able, so we can provide a 100 user license and 100 sim cards but it will support 10's of thousands of users/sims on one unit. Price wise, just shoot us an email and let us know what you'd be interested in trying to accomplish and we can work with folks to tailor systems within use case or price windows.
cheers!
-s
Very interesting, what about interference with existing networks and what antennas would you use to achieve 10s of miles? Are these included? Any ballpark pricing available?