Airvine Scientific has a product that could make life easier for IT staff. WaveCore is designed to beam a network signal through thick concrete walls, eliminating the need to drill holes or route your cabling via a circuitous course.

The Silicon Valley wireless company says its newly introduced kit is quick to deploy and can penetrate thick concrete walls and floors in commercial real estate structures.

Drilling a hole for a cabling might mean time-consuming and costly inspections to get permits, and having to to go around it might mean routing cables via the nearest elevator or riser shaft, it says.

WaveCore is basically a pair of devices that form a point-to-point Ethernet bridge using a wireless signal capable of penetrating up to 12 inches (30 cm) of concrete and brick at multi-gigabit data rates. An Ethernet bridge is simply a way of linking separate network segments, in this case through a thick wall that would otherwise pose an obstacle.

Concrete walls are an average thickness of 8 inches (20 cm) or more in commercial real estate buildings around the world, the firm says. These types of walls may form the building's outer perimeter, serve as interior load bearing walls or create protection for spaces such as fire control or network server rooms. 

Airvine claims that tests with select customers earlier this year delivered results such as a 3 Gbps connection through 8 inches of concrete in the middle of a 54-foot (16 meter) link, and a 4 Gbps connection through a 12 inch (30 cm) concrete wall in a garage that was in the middle of a 6-foot (1.8 meter) link.

In a blog post discussing WaveCore, VP of Marketing Dave Sumi explains how it had been developed off the back of an existing product, WaveTunnel, which operates as an indoor wireless backbone in factories, warehouses, conference centers and similar large sites.

This can penetrate most interior walls and bend around corners, but the company says the one obstacle that it just couldn't avoid and get around is thick concrete walls.

"After being confronted with this reality over the last year, we went back to the lab to see how we could develop a solution that, combined with WaveTunnel, would result in an all-inclusive and pervasive broadband backhaul solution within any large structure. The goal was to be able to provide a 2+ Gbps connection through a minimum of 12 inches of concrete," Sumi says.

The company completed in-house testing in May and over the last few months has been trialing the system with customers, with the results above, Sumi added.

The spec sheet [PDF] for WaveCore indicates that it uses a 6 GHz radio with directional antenna for getting through the walls, plus a standard 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi link for management. The data connection is via a standard Ethernet port supporting 1, 2.5, 5 or 10 Gbps, with an SFP+ fiber connection listed as optional. It can be powered using Power over Ethernet (PoE), but the spec sheet lists the WaveCore power consumption as 36 Watts.

Both WaveTunnel and WaveCore can be managed by the company's VineSuite software for network deployment and operation. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/09/06/wavecore_can_beam_a_gigabit/