Entrepreneur Hopes to Use Interference to Improve the Mobile Internet

Ten years ago, when most of us still had no idea what a smartphone was, Steve Perlman was contemplating a future in which we’d be watching so many YouTube videos over cellular networks that the radio frequency bands available to wireless carriers would get clogged up.

Now Perlman, a longtime inventor who cofounded WebTV and founded the cloud gaming service OnLive, says he has a solution that can make better use of the wireless spectrum and could eventually lead to cheaper, lighter phones. Perlman says pCell takes a different approach than the standard cellular network that seeks to minimize interference: it embraces signal interference.

In his vision, base stations smaller than your typical satellite TV antenna are placed wherever it’s convenient (such as on the roof or the side of a building), and their signals purposely overlap. Those overlapping signals, Perlman says, combine constructively to create a sort of personal cell, a centimeter in diameter, that moves with you as you move around the network. The signal doesn’t diminish as each additional user joins the network.

Overall capacity can grow by adding more access points. Perlman says that pCell works with existing LTE devices, and that users won’t notice as they move from a regular cellular access point to a pCell node. Perlman’s San Francisco-based company, Artemis Networks, is working with wireless carriers and spectrum owners, he says, as well as entrepreneurs interested in using pCell over unlicensed spectrum.