NEC to acquire Blue Danube for Massive MIMO 5G beamforming

NEC agreed to acquire Blue Danube Systems, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Blue Danube has successfully demonstrated its Coherent Massive MIMO 5G beamforming technology in numerous trials around the world, delivering up to 3X capacity increases with first generation software in commercial mobile networks using existing mobile phones. The company says its Coherent Massive MIMO together with autonomous AI/ML beam optimization software will enable mobile network operators to improve overall multi-site performance in both FDD and TDD bands. 

Blue Danube has been shipping products commercially for over 5 years.

Mark Pinto, CEO of Blue Danube, said, “We are excited about joining the NEC team that is an Open RAN leader and recognized for its end-to-end Open 5G solutions and system integration capabilities. Becoming part of NEC enables Blue Danube to expand our 5G product offerings, and together we will bring ever more powerful hardware and software products based on O-RAN specifications to customers worldwide.”

http://www.bluedanube.com

• Blue Danube Systems was backed by Sequoia Capital and Silver Lake along with other investors including AT&T. 

Blue Danube announces coherent Massive MIMO

Wednesday, October 16, 2019  Blue Danube  

Blue Danube Systems announced its first Coherent Massive MIMO solution for TDD networks. Blue Danube said its approach to Massive MIMO starts by assuring RF array coherency which, in conjunction with digital processing, uniquely enables the definition, placement and dynamic coordination of high precision beams. These beams can be software controlled to direct RF energy towards high user-density areas, while minimizing adjacent sector interference,...

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Blue Danube demos FDD Massive MIMO in Clustered Multi-Sectors

Thursday, February 22, 2018  #MWC18, Blue Danube, MIMO  

Blue Danube Systems announced the commercial deployment of its massive MIMO solution to multiple clustered cell sites. Blue Danube has performed multi-sector beam optimization using its BeamCraft 500 Massive MIMO systems at two different sites within the FDD-LTE network at a US mobile operator. The company said that it has not been clearly proven until now that Massive MIMO is deployable beyond isolated high-demand sectors where effects such as...

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Blue Danube intros 96-element, Multiband, Massive MIMO Antenna

Tuesday, February 13, 2018  #MWC18, Blue Danube, Start-Ups  

Blue Danube Systems, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, introduced its 96-element, second-generation 5G-ready Massive MIMO system. Blue Danube's the BeamCraft 600 series supports simultaneous beamforming over multiple frequency bands and across multiple cellular standards, allowing operators to deliver increased capacity through a single compact system. The company said its Massive MIMO can dynamically direct radio frequency (RF) beams...

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Blue Danube announces coherent Massive MIMO

Blue Danube Systems announced its first Coherent Massive MIMO solution for TDD networks.

Blue Danube said its approach to Massive MIMO starts by assuring RF array coherency which, in conjunction with digital processing, uniquely enables the definition, placement and dynamic coordination of high precision beams. These beams can be software controlled to direct RF energy towards high user-density areas, while minimizing adjacent sector interference, to improve overall network performance. Blue Danube’s FDD systems have been deployed by five operators worldwide and have been in commercial network operation in North America since 2016 serving thousands of users and carrying hundreds of gigabytes of data traffic daily.

With the addition of support for 3.5 GHz (3GPP Band 42, Band 43, Band 48) and 2.5 GHz (3GPP Band 38, Band 40, Band 41), network operators around the world can realize the benefits of true 3D beamforming and Massive MIMO in sub-6 GHz TDD spectrum. Blue Danube is partnering with leading CBRS equipment vendors to deliver an end to end beamforming solution in Q1’2020.

Coherent architecture will offer a significant performance boost for upcoming TDD networks as well, including 5G and CBRS deployments, and could be the key to making ORAN networks more competitive.”

“Our unique approach to Massive MIMO and 3D beamforming allows us to seamlessly design systems regardless of the radio air-interface,” said Blue Danube CEO, Mark Pinto. “In fact, we intentionally targeted the FDD market first since it accounted for 85% of the worldwide deployments and successfully delivered the industry’s first commercial Massive MIMO solution in 2016. The rest of the industry has focused on TDD solutions to take advantage of channel reciprocity to simplify design, but they continue to struggle to deliver a robust system with realizable gains and at economical price points. We are confident of filling that gap for network operators by offering a complete sub-6 GHz product portfolio.”

http://www.bluedanube.com

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Blue Danube's Massive MIMO delivers 2.5X LTE boost

Blue Danube Systems, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, announced significant results from multiple new FDD deployments in commercial networks with live traffic.

The company said its multi-unit installations show more than 2.5 times higher cellular capacity and significantly increased user throughputs for both legacy LTE terminals as well as new generation smartphones.

Specifically, Blue Danube’s BeamCraft 500 antennas were deployed in LTE networks in dense urban megacities and other areas with high traffic load nearing full bandwidth utilization. The performance was measured directly from the operators’ network performance management systems.

Blue Danube said the test results exhibit increasing gains with the number of units deployed and highlight the benefits of multi-site optimization and coordination. Consistent performance improvements were observed across all multi-site deployments where BeamCraft units faced each other and intercell coordination can be fully exploited, with capacity gains reaching and exceeding 2.5X over the whole cluster. In addition, the Blue Danube deployments increased average user download speeds and extended 4G LTE service to previously underserved areas, providing improved indoor coverage to high demand location including hospitals, mass transit terminals and high-rise buildings with vertical beamforming.

Blue Danube’s Coherent Massive MIMO system has been deployed by five 4G LTE operators worldwide and has been in commercial network operation in North America since 2016 serving thousands of users and carrying hundreds of gigabytes of data traffic daily.

“Today’s results clearly showcase the unmatched performance of our Coherent Massive MIMO technology,” said Mark Pinto, President and CEO of Blue Danube Systems. “There are no other solutions available in the market with the same level of performance in live commercial operation. The flexibility of our solution enables unique capabilities from vertical beamforming to on-demand capacity with dynamic time-of-day beamforming. We have proven our technology for FDD mode and are now expanding our capability to TDD as well as higher frequency bands.”

http://www.bluedanube.com

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Blue Danube demos FDD Massive MIMO in Clustered Multi-Sectors

Blue Danube Systems announced the commercial deployment of its massive MIMO solution to multiple clustered cell sites.

Blue Danube has performed multi-sector beam optimization using its BeamCraft 500 Massive MIMO systems at two different sites within the FDD-LTE network at a US mobile operator. The company said that it has not been clearly proven until now that Massive MIMO is deployable beyond isolated high-demand sectors where effects such as adjacent cell interference must be addressed. Its approach to Massive MIMO starts by assuring RF array coherency which in conjunction with digital processing uniquely enables the definition, placement and dynamic coordination of high precision beams that can be software engineered to minimize adjacent sector interference and actually improve clustered cell performance.

“We are excited to be the first in the industry to successfully demonstrate capacity improvement for clustered multi-sector Massive MIMO deployments,” said Mark Pinto, CEO of Blue Danube Systems. “Adding to our recent announcement of the first multi-band Massive MIMO products, we are making available powerful and flexible tools for operators to seamlessly insert 5G-ready technology into their existing LTE networks for substantial system-wide capacity gain.”

“Cell edge performance continues to be a major challenge for pure digital Massive MIMO systems,” said Shiv Panwar, Professor of Electrical Engineering at NYU and Director of the New York State Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT). “This is the very first demonstration of Massive MIMO performance in a clustered deployment. Blue Danube’s multi-sector BeamCraft results are very exciting and demonstrate that Massive MIMO is now viable for wide-scale adoption in FDD networks.”

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Blue Danube intros 96-element, Multiband, Massive MIMO Antenna

Blue Danube Systems, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, introduced its 96-element, second-generation 5G-ready Massive MIMO system.

Blue Danube's the BeamCraft 600 series supports simultaneous beamforming over multiple frequency bands and across multiple cellular standards, allowing operators to deliver increased capacity through a single compact system.

The company said its Massive MIMO can dynamically direct radio frequency (RF) beams where mobile traffic is high and without changes to existing cell sites or smartphones. The 96-element BeamCraft 600 supports up to two active mid bands using 16 software configurable beams, double the capacity of the company’s previous generation. An integrated passive low-band option is also available to further conserve antenna mount positions.  Blue Danube has deployed active solutions in 3 mid bands to date (AWS, PCS, DCS) and will trial the multi-band BeamCraft 600 in 2Q’18. Additional products supporting higher frequency bands including TDD will be available in 2H’18.

“Blue Danube’s portfolio of Massive MIMO products enables operators to flexibly customize RF energy to optimize capacity, coverage and cell edge performance.” said Mark Pinto, CEO & President of Blue Danube Systems. “Our 5G-ready architecture allows beam-based network management leading to virtualization of the network RF functions. By avoiding the rigidity imposed by other radio architectures, we are enabling a completely flexible RAN ecosystem.”

• Blue Danube Systems is headed by Dr. Mark Pinto, who previously was was an executive vice president at Applied Materials, where he launched the company’s solar business. Earlier in his career, Dr. Pinto was CTO of the Lucent Microelectronics Group and general manager of a wireless/wireline product division.
• The company was founded by Dr. Mihai Banu, who developed the Blue Danube concepts independently since 2006. Previously,  he was R&D director at Agere Systems, working on analog circuits, RF systems for wireless LANs and wireless circuits research, and before that was Head of the Communications Circuits Research department at Lucent Technologies.
• Investors in Blue Danube Systems include Sequoia, Northgate, Silver Lake, and AT&T.

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