Mobix Labs: Improving 5G millimeter band technology @ CES 2022 - Show Notes

Mobix Labs: Improving 5G millimeter band technology @ CES 2022

Saturday Jan 15, 2022 (00:12:11)

Description

Mobix Labs is a fabless semiconductor company focused on developing highly innovative RF and mixed-signal components and solutions for 5G millimeter band technology. Led by a team of highly experienced and accomplished industry executives, Mobix Labs is establishing itself as the go-to leader of RF, mixed-signal, antenna components, and solutions for the sub-GHz 5GNR market and beyond.

What does Mobix Labs do?

Their comprehensive product offerings include mmWave 5G ICs, modules, and antennas. They are designed to make it easier for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to develop products with best-in-class performance. With over two decades of experience in the wireless industry, Mobix Labs has the knowledge and expertise to help OEMs bring their next-generation products to market quickly and efficiently.

5G millimeter band technology is the next big thing in wireless communications. Mobix Labs is leading the charge in developing innovative products and solutions for this growing market. Their comprehensive product offerings include mmWave 5G ICs, modules, and antennas that are designed to make it easier for OEMs to develop products with best-in-class performance.

The True 5G Solutions from Mobix Labs are essential to unlocking the unprecedented levels of performance and speed promised by 5G. With its advanced research and development capabilities, Mobix Labs is well-positioned to provide leadership in this important technological area.

Where can the technology be used?

Currently, the company is focused on the infrastructure market. That means that the chips are intended to be used in the technology that makes it possible for you to get 5G signals. This includes the cellular towers installed by the carriers, repeaters installed by carriers, and small repeaters installed by businesses and individuals.

This focus means that you could be interacting with the company's technology every day without even knowing it. This is because these chips and radios are responsible for the high-end 5G signal strength available on your phone. Their chips could be at the tops of tall cellular towers, but it could also be built into smaller form devices, like the cellular repeaters that many cities are having installed on the tops of telephone poles around town to enhance cellular reception.

The need for this much infrastructure is because of the nature of the frequencies used for mmWave 5G. The higher frequency used makes it possible for incredibly fast internet speeds, but is more susceptible to interference from everyday items, like walls. Our tests show about 8x speed in our offices over standard 5G on the same device. But these increased speeds are limited to Mission Control and are not available in the studio - likely because of the thicker walls, additional lights, and equipment.

However, this focus on infrastructure does not negate the technology's other uses. In fact, the company has been in discussions about other implementations, including vehicles. Cars and trucks are more regularly using 5G technology for communication, both to the internet, as well as direct communication between one another. This allows for software updates to the vehicle's systems, as well as the ability for it to know about what other cars and trucks around it are intending to do.

To learn more about Mobix Labs and their 5G mmWave technology, visit the company's website.

Interview by Scott Ertz of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology.

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Participants

Scott Ertz

Host, Episode Author

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Interview

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Transcript

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Scott Ertz (0:08)

Well, I believe our next guest is here. Hello.

Fabian Battaglia (0:14)

Hi.

Scott Ertz (0:15)

How are you doing today?

Fabian Battaglia (0:16)

Great, how are you?

Scott Ertz (0:17)

I'm doing fantastic. Go ahead and introduce yourself for me.

Fabian Battaglia (0:21)

I'm Fabian Battaglia, CEO of Mobix Labs based in Irvine, California.

Scott Ertz (0:27)

Okay, and tell me about your company.

Fabian Battaglia (0:30)

Well, Mobix Labs is a fabless semiconductor company. We're focused on two primary areas. One is wireless and we develop innovative solutions for 5G and when I say 5G, we focus on the millimeter-wave spec of 5G.

Scott Ertz (0:48)

Okay.

Fabian Battaglia (0:49)

And we have another division which is involved in connectivity. We call AOCs, Active Optical Cables.

Scott Ertz (0:59)

Okay. So for consumers, the 5G millimeter band is what T-Mobile calls UC, like, if you see 5G, UC shows up on your phone, that's what we're talking about here, right?

Fabian Battaglia (1:16)

Yes, yes. And it's from a spec standpoint, it's the 24 to 44 Gig space, as opposed to sub-6Ghz, which is most commonly used today, for 5G, which is really only incrementally better than what you have in 4G LTE. So when the millimeter wave space becomes adopted, the performance on it will be drastically better.

Scott Ertz (1:46)

Yeah, I actually have from time to time, interestingly, not in the studio, but in mission control out there. I get UC out there, but not here. And so I actually did a speed test comparison on the same device in the studio, and then in mission control, and it is wildly different.

Fabian Battaglia (2:07)

Yes, yeah. And then there are some challenges with it. And that's why there's a lot of innovation going on right now. And sure, we're a big part of that, um, there's the physics involved in transmitting and receiving signals at that speed, you know, become a challenge.

Fabian Battaglia (2:25)

Because the millimeter-wave signals, they don't travel through walls, or glass or foliage or weather, not nearly as well as the 4G LTE signal does. So there are some challenges associated with that. But that becomes an opportunity for us. And we think that we've got a very innovative solution, an economical, innovative solution with some pretty cool features.

Scott Ertz (2:50)

Very cool. So let's talk about where you fit into that ecosystem.

Fabian Battaglia (2:58)

Okay, so we develop ICs, that, effectively, what we do is we connect from the antenna all the way back to a baseband processor in a modem or a radio. And so the company was founded on our flagship device, which we call a beamformer. And beamformers, the technology used for in 5G, specifically a millimeter-wave, because of the challenges that we were just talking about. So we developed a front end or a beamformer device. And now we're also developing some circuitry, some chips that go around that. And then this as we go down to the signal path from the antenna all the way back back to a baseband processor. We don't provide the processor, but we provide everything else within that block dagger.

Scott Ertz (3:52)

Okay, and which side of the communication or do you specialize in? Or do you do both sides?

Fabian Battaglia (4:01)

Well, what our chips would go into we're targeting the infrastructure market. And its full-duplex receive transmit, and are what we're targeting is what our customers would be or those that would be developing small cells, or repeaters or access points. That's our primary target. Now, we would fit into other applications, we would fit into a cell phone. But that's not our primary target, you know, today.

Scott Ertz (4:32)

Gotcha. So you say you're not necessarily on the consumer side. You're not trying to put it here.

Fabian Battaglia (4:40)

Okay.

Scott Ertz (4:41)

You're focusing more on the towers and the repeaters and, and,

Fabian Battaglia (4:47)

Yes.

Scott Ertz (4:46)

We're like that.

Fabian Battaglia (4:48)

What we call the infrastructure side, although now we've been exposed to some other interesting applications, and one, in particular, is automotive.

Scott Ertz (4:57)

Okay.

Fabian Battaglia (4:58)

So we're seeing more opportunities and more potential use cases for millimeter wave, you know, in those markets.

Scott Ertz (5:07)

Okay, that's interesting. And you know, I always love it and this happens a lot at CES. And it's you know why so many of us are disappointed to not be on the show floor, and the conversations that you have, where you, I built this product, and then you have a conversation at CES and you're like, "Oh, well, you could use that for this". And you're like," Well, I would never give 100 years, I never would have come up with that".

Fabian Battaglia (5:31)

Yeah, well, that's one of the cool things about 5G, and specifically in the millimeter wave space. I mean, there are some use cases, some that we can't even think of right now. So in getting into medical type applications, and as I mentioned, automotive autonomous vehicles and, and the things like holographic applications. And, you know, you think about how we now, you know, even with COVID. And it's made it even as far as the bandwidth required to do the things that we do on a day-to-day basis if you think about how we work, how we communicate, how we educate, you know, how we entertain ourselves. And, you know, that's all it's becoming, you know, bandwidth is going to become very, very important for some of these advanced use cases. And again, as soon as we figured this out, I think there's gonna be other use cases that we can't even think of right now, which are gonna become a reality.

Scott Ertz (6:34)

Yeah, for sure. Right before we started talking. I was talking about how, you know, just a couple of years ago at show floor there was not a dedicated, like health tech space. And now, you know, it's a huge portion of the show floor. Because once somebody said, "Well, we could do this with a fitness band". Oh, well, everything changed. Now you got stuff built into the uniforms of professional athletes? Right, right. As soon as you start messing around with something, you come up with new ideas.

Fabian Battaglia (7:08)

Right? So yeah, the use cases again, and what we're gonna enable going forward are very exciting.

Scott Ertz (7:17)

And certainly sounds like it. Now. Obviously, like you said, you're not focusing even on the consumer product so much as the infrastructure right now. But we've got a wide audience. If people want to find out more about the things that that your company is up to, or engage you possibly in a cellular repeater product or something, how can they do that?

Fabian Battaglia (7:47)

Well, they can contact us. We have our website, mobixlabs.com. We have our sales group. We have a pretty far reach where we are global. But mobixlabs.com is the best way to understand and become familiar with what we are offering and what we're working on. And we're relatively new, Mobix Labs has been in existence for about a year and a half.

Scott Ertz (8:15)

Okay.

Fabian Battaglia (8:16)

All the foundational technology that it's based on started in 2017. And the idea then was to build a portfolio of IP.

Scott Ertz (8:26)

Okay.

Fabian Battaglia (8:27)

And patent that IP. So we had a group of really, really smart guys that had architected this technology, and the idea at that point was to position it to be acquired. And about a year and a half ago, we decided that the technology was so strong that we wanted to productize it. And that's when we formed Mobix Labs. And so we took that portfolio of IP, and we turned it into a chip.

Scott Ertz (9:01)

Very cool. Well, I gotta tell you, I'm watching our chat right now. And I can see that there are people having conversations about implementations of this. You've got the audience really excited.

Fabian Battaglia (9:16)

And that's what it's really going to take you the interesting approach that we've taken at Mobix Labs is, you know, today, the technology and our engineers, not just at Mobix Labs, but as a global community, the engineering community has gotten so good. But the challenge becomes with technology, this advances making it economical. And what we've done and what our team is really good at is taking a theory to practice approach and coming up with solutions which are economical, because, you know, if you can't make it economical, it's not going to become pervasive. It really doesn't benefit anybody, right if you can't produce it in high volume at a price point where everybody can use it. So we feel like we're contributing to that in making millimeter waves a reality so that we can enable all these cool applications. And we're making great progress, you know, up to that end.

Scott Ertz (10:12)

Very cool. Well, I definitely appreciate you coming on and talking about this. I know sometimes people panic, and they're like, "Well, I don't really target consumers directly with my thing". And I'll tell you based on what's happening in the chat room, that's not a concern here. So I appreciate you coming on and talking.

Fabian Battaglia (10:32)

Yeah. Happy to be here. Thank you.

Scott Ertz (10:35)

Absolutely. And have a good rest of the day. Are you at-?

Fabian Battaglia (10:39)

We're at a show. Yeah.

Scott Ertz (10:41)

Okay.

Fabian Battaglia (10:41)

You are. Yeah, we're at the show. And interestingly enough, unfortunately, we've had, you know, some of our customers decided not to attend. We've had some meetings virtually. But actually, we've got a very packed schedule. And we had great, great meetings today so far. We have some more this afternoon and more tomorrow. So it's unfortunate, you know, but we got to give this COVID thing a good punch in the nose and get it behind us

Scott Ertz (11:08)

Agreed, and know their technology has nothing to do with it, conspiracy theorists. Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time.

Fabian Battaglia (11:22)

Thank you.

Scott Ertz (11:23)

Come on and talk about it. Cool technology and I'm glad you're focusing on it.

Fabian Battaglia (11:28)

Great. Thanks.

Scott Ertz (11:29)

Have a good rest of the show.

Fabian Battaglia (11:30)

Alright. The same. Bye.

Erin Hurst (11:34)

TPN CES 2022 coverage is executive produced by Michele Mendez. Technical Directors are Kurt Corless and Adam Barker, associate producers are Nancy Ertz and Maurice McCoy. Interviews are edited by Jo Mini. Hosts Marlo Anderson, Todd Cochrane, Scott Ertz, Christopher Jordan, Daniele Mendez, and Allante Sparks. Las Vegas studio provided by HC Productions. Remote studio provided by PLUGHITZ Productions. This has been a Tech Podcasts Network production copyright 2022.

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