Software radio company Vanu opens R&D centre in Bangalore

BANGALORE, INDIA: Vanu, Inc., a developer of software radio solutions for cellular operators, announced today that it has opened a research and development center in Bangalore. 

The new R&D center is a subsidiary of Vanu, Inc., and plans to expand its staff starting in 2008 to develop 3G and 4G waveforms in India. The centre will focus on technologies like EGPRS/EDGE. New product plan will include the development of 3G/UMTS Radio Network Controller.

“India is extremely important both as growth market and as a center for high quality research and development,” said Dr. Vanu Bose, CEO of Vanu, Inc.  “Our technology changes the wireless industry from a hardware-based industry into a software industry, and the high level of skill and experience of Indian developers in applications software and networking make India an ideal place to grow our development teams."

"In addition, I am very excited by the prospect that our shared infrastructure product may provide a cost effective way to bring cellular telephony to the 100’s of millions of people in rural India who don’t have any form of telephony today.”

Vanu Inc is the developer of Anywave Software Radio solution, the first software radio citified by U.S Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The device uses a processor, which can handle two waveforms simultaneously. It is the only infrastructure solution available in the wireless industry, which simultaneously operates multiple standards on a single system.

It has the ability to run GSM and CDMA simultaneously on a single network. This will hopefully help Indian operators to take advantages of many of the spectrum rules changes currently under discussion. 

Some cellular operators have already deployed the product in rural areas of North America. Vanu Bose said that they are in early-stage discusiions with some of the operators in the country. "Several operators including Tata, BSNL and Reliance are looking into running both GSM and CDMA networks."

“Vanu’s technology has the potential to change the entire rural wireless landscape in India by allowing wireless carriers to easily add new standards and upgrade their networks through simple software downloads,” said Pradeep Malhotra, managing director of Vanu India Pvt Ltd.

 “With a strong presence in India, we are confident that we will recruit India’s best and brightest engineering talent, allowing us to become prominent members of the Bangalore business community for years to come.”

The Vanu Anywave Software Radio technology eliminates the use of proprietary chip sets for a cellular system’s signal processing by developing each wireless standard entirely in high level software running on industry standard hardware. 

This allows operators for quick and efficient upgrades to newer technologies without incurring the large capital investment and time-to-market costs typically associated with technology deployments. 

The Anywave solution also significantly reduces backhaul costs; requires less space for equipment; and features an open standards architecture that eliminates hardware lock-in while delivering price-performance improvements throughout the life of the system.

Vanu Bose is son of Amar Bose who founded Bose Corporation.