Broadband Access
Entropic's broadband access solutions use coaxial cable infrastructure to deliver "last kilometer" connectivity for high-speed broadband access to single-family homes and MDUs. Our solutions are designed to work on passive coax networks. This means that the fiber node in HFC or PON network terminates at the last active device in a coax wide area network. This termination point is typically within 600 meters of a customer premise. For active or passive coax distribution plants extending up to 1.2 km, cable operators can use a c.LINK-compliant distribution amplifier which increases coverage while delivering the same throughput performance.
Entropic's solutions are based on our c.LINK® Access technology and provide efficient communications between an access node such as a fiber termination in the basement of an apartment building and the cable outlets in each apartment throughout the building.
The c.LINK Access technology utilizes a single RF channel for communicating in both the "upstream" and "downstream" directions. This allows more flexibility in the allocations of the amount of information transmitted in either direction. Also, since the access node device and the client do not transmit and receive simultaneously, the device can share much of the front-end circuitry for both transmit and receive functions, resulting in additional cost savings.
Since communications to different nodes in the network and to and from each device are accomplished through the time division of the RF channel, a single device using our c.LINK Access technology at the access node can communicate with as many as 31 clients, resulting in a cost-effective solution for high-speed broadband access. Entropic's c.LINK Access products are able to simultaneously support up to four channels over a single coax cable. As a result, our solution is scalable up to 124 subscribers over a single distribution cable supporting an effective PHY rate of 1 Gbps.
Primary features of c.LINK Access include:
- Service over coaxial cable up to 600 meters
- Up to 270 Mbps instantaneous data rate (phy rate) both upstream and downstream
- No terminating network interface device (NID) required unlike VDSL or FTTH
- Terminates in any room, or multiple rooms, at coax outlets and can be moved or consumer installed
- Requires fewer IC's in the gateway device (VDSL: 1:1 Gateway chipset/subscriber, c.LINK chipset is shared by 31+ subscribers)
- Provides configurable bandwidth management for both upstream and downstream data rate
- Doesn't reside in a noisy frequency band; c.LINK signal band is 800-1500 MHz
Primary Applications of c.LINK Access:
- Internet Access
- VOIP & Video on Demand
- Data Services (Gaming, Stock Quotes, etc.)