What is Spectrum Slicing?

Edgewater’s physical layer Spectrum Slicing allows a frequency band to be divided, or sliced, to enable more radios to operate in a given area.  This capability is a signal processing technique that works at the most base network layer, the Physical layer, PHY layer, or Layer 1.  Spectrum Slicing force multiplies other Wi-Fi features because it creates more physical channels for other Wi-Fi features higher up the stack to run upon.  For example, a packet scheduling feature, running on a single channel, improves Wi-Fi traffic on that single channel.  With Spectrum Slicing, that packet scheduling feature would have multiple channels to run on, therefore adding a force multiplying effect to the feature. Think of Spectrum Slicing like moving from a single-lane road to a multi-lane highway — regardless of Wi-Fi technology.

The recently completed Proof of Concept (PoC) with a major Tier 1 Service Provider showed 7 to 18 times performance gains in 75% of homes surveyed.  Interestingly, homes with the most devices saw the greatest improvements. In rigorous testing scenarios with the same Tier 1 Service Provider, conducted by an independent test house using real-world scenarios, the following key metrics were proven:

  • Results  demonstrate an impressive 50% improvement in latency
  • 6-12 times throughput gains for Residential Service Provider use cases in earlier Proof of Concept

Why is Spectrum Slicing the right choice?

Wi-Fi networks suffer from spectral inefficiency.  This inefficiency is caused by the single-channel radio architecture that was adopted for Wi-Fi in the 1990s and is still being used in Wi-Fi radios today.  Edgewater Wireless breaks this mold with Spectrum Slicing.  This innovative, patented technology allows multiple channels of Wi-Fi to co-exist within the same Wi-Fi band, more fully utilizing the available spectrum and increasing device capacity for high device density environments such as the smart home, the business enterprise and commerical IOT deployments.

What’s the advantage of Spectrum Slicing?

Our technology delivers the highest channel density available on the market today and fully utilizes the available spectrum. More channels means more available lanes for traffic, and just like a multi-lane highway, allows more devices to pass more traffic, more efficiently.