New Wireless Network Technology Could Be 1,000 Times Faster than 4G

As the demand for more smartphone data increases, start-up Artemis Networks is developing pCell, a new wireless network technology that claims to speed up mobile signals, making them up to 1,000 times faster than 4G and other conventional signals.

The system could replace tower cells with a “personal cell network” powered by small router-sized boxes called pWaves. Several of these boxes are spread throughout an area, bouncing signals off one another.

Cell towers generally send out signals across a large area and the further away you are or if you’re in a crowded area, the poorer your signal will be. With pCell technology, signals are sent within a smaller area so that people will have their own personal network with devices that are “always full speed”.

The guys behind the technology say that it’s “a radical new approach to wireless that consistently delivers full-speed mobile data to every mobile device concurrently, regardless of how many users are sharing the same spectrum at once … eliminating the congestion, dead zones and unreliable connections we’ve come to accept with conventional cellular technology.”

Artemis and its founder and chief executive Steve Perlman believe that not only will signal strengths improve but power will be saved. They claim that pCell will use just a 1-milliwatt transmitter to transfer data, which is considerably smaller than that of network towers or Wi-Fi radios. Phones too will use less power as they will not need to strain as much to find a signal.

The start-up will be facing a number of challenges in getting the infrastructure off the ground but the developers say that installing pWave boxes will be much easier than towers. It is working with 4G base station developer PureWave Networks to design and develop the base stations for testing.

The company will begin trialling the service in San Francisco later this year by deploying 350 boxes on rooftops across the city. Perlman believes that pCell technology could be fully deployed by the end of 2015.