Tarana Wireless is a company currently based in Berkeley, California that is demonstrating a solution to solve backhaul congestion problems the firm hopes will become the new standard for small cells. The company has grown to almost 40 employees as it gears up to demo its “universal small cell backhaul solution” in market trials this quarter, with commercial shipments planned to begin sometime next year.

Steve Sifferman, CEO at Tarana Wireless, recently said the company has had in-depth conversations with carriers, and believes other vendors are “fundamentally taking a cookie cutter approach that falls short in a variety of ways – throughput, range and cost of ownership.”

In a recent interview, the CEO stated that “Tarana avoids this with the ability to provide line of sight and non-line of sight wireless backhaul with antennas that automatically self-align, and nodes that have a NLoS range of up to four kilometers and ‘nearly unlimited’ range for line of sight, operating in the 2.5-3.7 GHz bands, with significantly higher speeds than current solutions.”

The range allows “more coverage with less equipment,” which Tarana says would lower the total cost of ownership.

Nick Marshall, an ABI Research (News - Alert) principal analyst, said, “Scaling small cell backhaul in terms of performance and density has been a significant hurdle for vendors but is an essential market need,” also adding that the technology has created a new wireless paradigm.

Tarana Wireless is demonstrating its recently launched AbsoluteAir Universal Backhaul solution at Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) this week. The new solution for cell backhaul would ultimately connect nodes and end nodes in what the market refers to as “Tarana Topology,” which would enable 3G/4G small cells to be deployed virtually anywhere.

But Infonetics (News - Alert), a telecommunications market research company, stated that, “there is no silver bullet backhaul solution for all small cell deployment scenarios, as each depends on multiple variables, including location, form factor limitations, local regulations, available power and network, and cost. As a result, mobile operators and backhaul transport providers need a diverse tool kit of solutions for small cell backhaul.”