lime microsystems award write up

2016 Global Software Defined RadioTechnology Innovation Award

2016

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

© Frost & Sullivan 2016 2 “We Accelerate Growth”

Contents

Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3

Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 3

Technology Attributes and Future Business Value ..................................................... 4

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 7

Significance of Technology Innovation .......................................................................... 8

Understanding Technology Innovation .......................................................................... 8

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................... 9

Technology Attributes ........................................................................................... 9

Future Business Value ........................................................................................... 9

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards ..................... 10

Research Methodology ........................................................................................ 10

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices ................................................................................................................. 11

About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 12



Background and Company Performance

Industry Challenges

The potential of software defined radio (SDR) to disrupt the global wireless industry is

difficult to overstate. An SDR is a virtualised radio with operating parameters configured

purely in software running on commodity hardware. This programmability is the missing

piece in the virtualised communications network, extending software control from the

core, where it is already common practice, to the Radio Access Network (RAN).

With a programmable RAN, network resources are available to meet the needs of an

individual use case. Rather than deploy different base stations for narrowband and

broadband, or for licensed and unlicensed spectrum, the service provider can be a single

developer who simply configures the communications they need from their laptop.

SDR has long been achievable in the lab and for military applications, but only now is

becoming accessible at a price point with mass market potential. Affordable SDR allows

any device with a radio to be software-enabled, opening up the possibility of embedding

Internet of Things (IoT) gateways, or even an LTE small cell, in everyday consumer

products. Furthermore, an SDR app-store gives developers instant access to downloadable

technology stacks. This means they can turn around new applications more quickly and

future-proof the product if a new and better protocol later emerges.

However, two problems have held back this vision to date. Firstly, the RF transceiver chain

is subject to the laws of physics. RF components such as filters, tuners, switches,

amplifiers and antennas are precision devices that are optimised for specific frequencies

and tolerances. Wideband coverage has proved impractical without duplicate parallel

chains. Secondly, significant compute power is needed to perform the required calibration

that shifts from one frequency band to another while maintaining high performance.

Traditional Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques using general purpose processors

have been unable to deliver sufficient accuracy in real time.

So until recently, fully flexible SDR remained a high-cost, customised project rather than a

mass market proposition. But silicon vendors have made important breakthroughs in

recent years. Frost & Sullivan commends Lime Microsystems for its Field Programmable RF

transceiver (FPRF) and LimeSDR reference board. UK-based Lime has a long track record

in transceiver chip design and has taken a creative approach in order to build an

ecosystem around its technology. A successful crowd-funding campaign raised over

£500,000 and promoted the $399 LimeSDR with a $100 discount that is driving significant

developer engagement.

The company’s willingness to open source its hardware design and core software shows its

commitment to drive volume and to invite disruption into the radio access network.



Technology Attributes and Future Business Value

Industry Impact

Affordable SDR has far-reaching implications for the wireless industry, accelerating the

shift in RAN architecture from dedicated macro-cell hardware to small cells running in the

cloud (cloud-RAN). A parallel shift is set to occur in market power - from a select few

suppliers of highly sophisticated and proprietary base stations to a loose coalition of

software developers and open source enthusiasts.

Lime Microsystems is encouraging a new breed of ‘telecom enterprises’ to fill this power

vacuum. These include telecom operators, IoT service providers, and system integrators.

Even network equipment providers (NEPs) will gain in the longer term, it claims, as their

revenues will inevitably shift from hardware solutions to services with the global migration

to virtualized networks.

Telecommunications companies (telcos) are closely watching developments to see how

SDR will meet carrier-class requirements. UK mobile operator EE is running a pilot of

LimeSDR to test coverage in remote areas of Scotland. It also contributed to the crowd-

funding campaign, paying $99,000 to sponsor 100 boards it donated to universities.

Many telcos see SDR as an opportunity to lower the cost of coverage in rural areas and to

reduce their dependence on the big three NEPs, Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei. More

importantly, according to Lime Microsystems CEO Ebrahim Bushehri, they need more

developers to run applications on their networks. As telcos gradually open up their

virtualized infrastructure, they need to monetize their network-as-a-service (NaaS)

platforms. Today, they are held back by the limited number of engineers who understand

the complexities of traditional RAN equipment. SDR democratizes access and inspires

innovation for the NaaS model to succeed.

More challenging for operators, SDR could change the economics of licensed spectrum. If

reliability and coverage can be achieved through software, the value of licenses could fall.

Governments, who rely on license income, would also be concerned about such a trend.

SDR enthusiasts counter that telcos should go even further and embrace a ‘licensed

spectrum as-a-service’ business model.

If telcos are reluctant to open up to this extent, others are already looking for

alternatives. Facebook has long complained about operators’ reluctance to address ‘the

4.5 billion unconnected’ and has seized on SDR as a way to address under-served areas in

developing markets. In 2H 2016 it will release OpenCellular, a small hardware device that

can be mounted on a tree or lamppost to deliver 2G, WiFi or LTE. The open source design

will be available to suppliers, including local entrepreneurs, as SDR and SoC versions.



Product Impact

Although many SDRs are now coming to market, LimeSDR stands out for the carrier-class

performance of its full duplex RF chain. Early adopters highlight the consistency of its

transceiver across an exceptionally wide bandwidth of 100KHz to 3.8GHz with 2x2 MIMO.

It achieves this performance through the combination of Lime’s LMS7002M transceiver

chip with Altera’s Cyclone IV Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for some of the

physical layer processing. Altera, acquired by Intel in 2015, has been an investor in Lime

and strategic partner since 2014 and also contributed to the LimeSDR crowd-funding

campaign.

The reference board supports 2G, CDMA, HSPA and LTE in all regional bands, as well as

WiFi, LoRa, ZigBee, and Bluetooth, among many others. It is programmed via a USB 3.0

IP connection and the host drive architecture includes the Lime Suite software, for

interoperability with other applications, and SoapySDR, an abstraction layer for

interoperability with alternative SDR hardware.

Other boards match some aspects of the LimeSDR spec, but none provide the combination

of frequency range plus open source hardware design and software. The quality is

reflected in the fact that some other SDR brands use Lime transceiver chips.

App-store functionality adds to the LimeSDR value proposition. Canonical’s Snappy Ubuntu

Core, a lightweight Linux distribution, allows developers to download technology stacks

and package their own protocols.

Overall, the LimeSDR offers developers a level of flexibility, quality, openness and

affordability not previously available in the context of the radio access network.

Scalability

Lime Microsystems’ business model for SDR relies on rapid adoption of its products. In the

coming months, it will need to collect reference customers and use cases to convince

telcos and enterprises that SDR can deliver the necessary reliability for critical

applications. At this early stage the company is focused on driving developer activity by

making products available at low cost, thereby reaching customers with the widest range

of use cases. Lime says the price will fall as more boards are sold.

Another initiative to drive scale is the certification programme. At $15,000, the

programme includes 10 LimeSDRs with cases, antennas and software, plus one-day of

training for up to 10 people at Lime’s head office in Guildford, UK.

Broader industry initiatives are also important to encourage infrastructure owners to

embrace open source and virtualised networks. In July, Lime Micro became one of five

new members of CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter), an open source

project led by the Linux Foundation and ON.Lab to introduce cloud and virtualisation to



telco infrastructure. CORD members include some of the world’s largest telcos, including

AT&T, NTT East, and Telefonica.

Customer Acquisition

Lime Microsystems recognizes the importance of developers experimenting with SDR, at a

time when many IoT initiatives and platform owners are competing for their attention. The

campaign on Crowd Supply was an important test of developer engagement, achieving its

target of $500,000 in about three months with over 2,500 boards sold.

Lime recognised early that it needed to be proactive, rather than see the market changing

around it. Even though its traditional business is in customisable, high-end RF transceiver

designs, the company has championed the open source movement from its beginnings. As

part of this effort, the company launched MyriadRF.org in 2012, a non-profit, open source

programme “to give both hobbyists and experienced design engineers a range of low-cost

RF boards and free design files available for general use”. The aim was to create “an

Arduino for the RF sector”. Four years later, the range of projects on the MyriadRF website

include a weather satellite monitor, 2G and 4G cellular base stations, and HDTV

broadcasting.

Projects help to show telcos that SDRs are cost-effective components for small cells. Telco

interest is initially focused on solving problems, such as lowering the cost of covering rural

areas. Over time, the hope is that SDR can be a catalyst for NaaS business models. In the

past, developers struggled to strike rewarding deals with telcos for access to their APIs.

The time taken to get network certification for devices also often proved a barrier. The

flexibility of devices like LimeSDR can help both parties forge mutually-beneficial

relationships.

Technology Licensing

Lime Microsystems has a long track record as a designer of RF transceiver chips for telco

and military communications. Nonetheless it is anticipating change in the market and

opening up its board hardware design and core SDR software under Creative Commons

and Apache 2.0 licences respectively.

The price of reference boards will fall over time and the RF transceiver and baseband

processing will eventually be combined onto a single System on a Chip (SoC). At these

price points, SDR capability will be embedded in IoT products and not only at aggregation

points. The potential volume of transceiver chip sales is therefore on course to track the

exponential growth in connected devices. Growing volume across a long tail of applications

and Original Device Manufacturers (ODMs) therefore compensates for falling average

selling prices (ASPs).



Visionary Innovation

Lime Microsystems describes SDR’s impact on the wireless industry as accelerating the

architectural shift from macro- to small-cell. Smaller cells mean more efficient

management systems and lower costs as customers are served by more suppliers.

Lime sees a long tail of use cases that aggregate into a mass market. The range of

customers and end users includes applications developers and device makers, network

operators, military and emergency services, systems integrators, test and measurement

vendors, NEPs and a new breed of ‘telecom enterprises’.

Ultimately, SDRs will enable the next step in access network evolution - truly cognitive

radio under the umbrella of 5G. An edge device will assess the bandwidth, reliability and

latency requirements of an application in order to select the most appropriate protocol and

coding scheme. The selection is made in software with reference to local RF conditions in

real time and little manual oversight is required.

Conclusion

Many innovators are impatient to see the wireless industry restructure around open

resources and virtualization. The pace of change depends on the interests of many

influential players, some with more to gain than others.

Lime Microsystems anticipates that programmable RF will ‘float all boats’ and accelerate

adoption of the new business models that will be inevitable in a software-dominated

world. Frost & Sullivan commends Lime for its technology performance, key partnership

with Altera and forward-looking initiatives to accelerate transformation in the radio access

network.

Because of its strong overall performance, Lime Microsystems is recognized with Frost &

Sullivan’s 2016 Technology Innovation Award.



Significance of Technology Innovation

Ultimately, growth in any organization depends upon finding new ways to excite the

market, and upon maintaining a long-term commitment to innovation. At its core,

technology innovation or any other type of innovation can only be sustained with

leadership in three key areas: understanding demand, nurturing the brand, differentiating

from the competition. This three-fold approach to nurturing innovation is explored further

below.

Understanding Technology Innovation Technology innovation begins with a spark of creativity that is systematically pursued,

developed, and commercialized. That spark can result from a successful partnership, a

productive in-house innovation group, or the mind of a singular individual. Regardless of

the source, the success of any new technology is ultimately determined by its

innovativeness and its impact on the business as a whole.



Key Benchmarking Criteria

For the Technology Innovation Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated

two key factors—Technology Attributes and Future Business Value—according to the

criteria identified below.

Technology Attributes

Criterion 1: Industry Impact

Requirement: Technology enables the pursuit of groundbreaking new ideas, contributing

to the betterment of the entire industry

Criterion 2: Product Impact

Requirement: Specific technology helps enhance features and functionality of the entire

product line for the company

Criterion 3: Scalability

Requirement: Technology is scalable, enabling new generations of products over time,

with increasing levels of quality and functionality

Criterion 4: Visionary Innovation

Requirement: Specific new technology represents true innovation based on a deep

understanding of future needs and applications

Criterion 5: Application Diversity

Requirement: New technology serves multiple products, multiple applications, and

multiple user environments

Future Business Value

Criterion 1: Financial Performance

Requirement: High potential for strong financial performance in terms of revenues,

operating margins and other relevant financial metrics

Criterion 2: Customer Acquisition

Requirement: Specific technology enables acquisition of new customers, even as it

enhances value to current customers

Criterion 3: Technology Licensing

Requirement: New technology displays great potential to be licensed across many sectors

and applications, thereby driving incremental revenue streams

Criterion 4: Brand Loyalty

Requirement: New technology enhances the company’s brand, creating and/or nurturing

brand loyalty

Criterion 5: Human Capital

Requirement: Customer impact is enhanced through the leverage of specific technology,

translating into positive impact on employee morale and retention



The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards

Research Methodology

Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research

methodology represents the analytical

rigor of our research process. It offers a

360-degree-view of industry challenges,

trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of

Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies.

Too often, companies make important

growth decisions based on a narrow

understanding of their environment,

leading to errors of both omission and

commission. Successful growth strategies

are founded on a thorough understanding

of market, technical, economic, financial,

customer, best practices, and demographic

analyses. The integration of these research

disciplines into the 360-degree research

methodology provides an evaluation

platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-

in-class levels.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN THE CHAOS

Technology

Obsolescence

Disruptive

Technologies

New

Applications

CEO

Demographics

Needs

and

PerceptionsSegmentation

Buying

Behavior

Branding

and

Positioning

Competitive

Benchmarking

Emerging

Competition

Competitive

Strategy

Capital

Investments

Availability

of

Capital

Country

Risk

Economic

Trends

Crowd

Sourcing

Growth

Strategies

Career

Development

Growth

Implementation

Industry

Evolution

New Vertical

Markets

Industry

Expansion

Industry

Convergence

Emerging

Technologies

Smart Cities

Sustainability

New Business

Cultures

GeoPolitical

Stability



Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices Frost & Sullivan Awards follow a 10-step process to evaluate Award candidates and assess

their fit to best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity of the Awards are based on

close adherence to this process..

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT

1 Monitor, target, and screen

Identify award recipient candidates from around the globe

• Conduct in-depth industry research

• Identify emerging sectors • Scan multiple geographies

Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria

2 Perform 360-degree research

Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline

• Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners

• Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria

• Rank all candidates

Matrix positioning all candidates’ performance relative to one another

3

Invite thought leadership in best practices

Perform in-depth examination of all candidates

• Confirm best-practice criteria • Examine eligibility of all candidates

• Identify any information gaps

Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates

4

Initiate research director review

Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles

• Brainstorm ranking options • Invite multiple perspectives on candidates’ performance

• Update candidate profiles

Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper

5

Assemble panel of industry experts

Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders

• Share findings • Strengthen cases for candidate eligibility

• Prioritize candidates

Refined list of prioritized award candidates

6

Conduct global industry review

Build consensus on award candidates’ eligibility

• Hold global team meeting to review all candidates

• Pressure-test fit with criteria • Confirm inclusion of all eligible candidates

Final list of eligible award candidates, representing success stories worldwide

7 Perform quality check

Develop official award consideration materials

• Perform final performance benchmarking activities

• Write nominations • Perform quality review

High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes

8

Reconnect with panel of industry experts

Finalize the selection of the best-practice award recipient

• Review analysis with panel • Build consensus • Select winner

Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria

9 Communicate recognition

Inform award recipient of award recognition

• Present award to the CEO • Inspire the organization for continued success

• Celebrate the recipient’s performance

Announcement of award and plan for how recipient can use the award to enhance the brand

10 Take strategic action

Upon licensing, company may share award news with stakeholders and customers

• Coordinate media outreach • Design a marketing plan • Assess award’s role in future strategic planning

Widespread awareness of recipient’s award status among investors, media personnel, and employees



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