AirHop and InterDigital Working to Combine “Network of Networks”

San Diego-based AirHop Communications and InterDigital (NASDAQ: [[ticker:IDCC]]) have been collaborating to integrate AirHop’s technology for self-organizing networks with InterDigital’s bandwidth management technology, according to a statement today. The companies plan to demonstrate their new capability at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of this month.

The joint effort to optimize bandwidth by integrating a variety of wireless networks is one of the first collaborations to be disclosed since InterDigital, the King of Prussia, PA, wireless technologies developer, opened a shop in San Diego last spring. In an e-mail this morning, InterDigital’s Jack Indekeu says, “Our collaboration developed mostly on technical grounds, and geography happened to be convenient—both companies are on the bleeding edge of complementary technology development.”

In a statement from the companies, AirHop CEO Yan Hui says, “Even as LTE deployments accelerate, it is becoming clear we are heading towards a major bandwidth shortfall, because mobile data demands are already outstripping the new network capacity. Innovative technology that addresses the need for maximizing network resources is critical to solving this problem.”

Hui says InterDigital and AirHop have been working together to “intelligently manage scarce network resources and proactively optimize coverage and capacity issues as they arise.”

Indekeu, who is InterDigital’s director of corporate marketing, explains that InterDigital envisions an integrated “network of networks” that allows wireless users to roam across cellular networks (which range from wide area networks to femtocell networks) and also to take advantage of available bandwidth on Wi-Fi and other types of wireless networks.

The collaboration integrates AirHop’s expertise in self-organizing network technology and multi-cell interference mitigation capability with InterDigital’s expertise in bandwidth management. InterDigital says its bandwidth management technology optimizes bandwidth for wireless service providers by managing network links based on quality of service requirements, policy, and network conditions.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.