Artemis partnered with Boldyn Networks in a Times Square proof of concept for pCell. The test delivered 700 Mbps in just 20 MHz of 3.5 GHz spectrum to 128 phones simultaneously—over 10 times the data capacity of the fastest 5G technology in the same amount of spectrum.
The Times Square Artemis pCell vRAN consists of 6 radiohead sites, each with 8 pWave radios and 8 antennas connected through 10km of Boldyn fiber to 3 1U servers in a Boldyn data center.
It took Boldyn less than 1 hour to install each Artemis radiohead site, including connectivity to Boldyn’s NYC fiber backbone network. The entire 700 Mbps pCell vRAN was installed and operational in less than a day.
Artemis pCell vRAN is inherently cell-free, requiring no cell planning and no tuning. Artemis pWave radios are small, low-power, low-cost, waterproof, and fanless. pWave radios can be installed anywhere it is convenient. In Times Square, pWaves sites were installed at 6 existing Boldyn fiber drops.
Load testing the Times Square pCell vRAN deployment required 128 phones tested simultaneously, all streaming HD videos, and then all running SpeedTest. Artemis SpaceTest was used to control all phones at once.
Over 30 people from Boldyn and Artemis stood by phones stacked on tripods in Times Square as the load tests were run on 128 phones simultaneously. All phones ran at near peak data rate.
It took Boldyn less than 1 hour to install 2 pWave radios in each of 6 Times Square subway station APs, including connecting to Boldyn’s fiber backbone network. The pCell vRAN was installed and operational in less than a day.
Boldyn staff tested phones in the Times Square subway station, and despite the complex RF environment, the pCell vRAN delivered near peak data rates to all phones throughout the station.
The Times Square pCell vRAN consists of 6 sites already served by Boldyn's fiber backbone network, where 8 pWave radios and 8 antennas (48 pWaves in total) are installed. Each pWave site has an 8-port PoE switch that powers the 8 pWave radios, and provides fiber uplink back to a Boldyn Data Center 5.75 km away. An Ethernet aggregation switch uplinks to an Ethernet switch in the Boldyn Lab 4.25 km away (for a total fiber fronthaul run of 10 km). The Boldyn Lab hosts 3 COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) AMD 1U pCell Servers running ultra-real-time Artemis pCell software that transmit and receive the baseband waveforms for the pWave radios. pCell vRAN uses conventional asynchronous Ethernet over standard switches.
