It hasn't launched a product yet, but Mimosa Networks just snagged $20 million in Series C funding to help boost development and sales of the company's last-mile 802.11ac Wi-Fi platform for Internet service providers.
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The funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), which is a returning investor, as is Oak Investment Partners. Mimosa has now raised a total of $38 million since its founding in 2012.
"The wireless industry is set to explode in the coming years, and Mimosa's technology is unique in its ability to help networks scale to meet the needs of the global communications market," said Greg Papadopoulos, venture partner at NEA.
"The readiness of these firms to aggressively invest in Mimosa only reinforces our confidence that our upcoming product suite will be broadly embraced by the wireless industry and by service providers," said Brian Hinman, Mimosa cofounder and CEO.
Campbell, Calif.-based Mimosa has been developing technology to deliver unlicensed outdoor backhaul based on the 802.11ac "gigabit Wi-Fi" standard. The company intends to commercially launch its first products later this year.
Using 4x4 802.11ac with multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), Mimosa's current radio operates in 5 GHz spectrum over bandwidths of up to 80 MHz and at modulation rates up to 256 QAM, reaching speeds of 1 Gbps and higher. Quantenna Communications is the exclusive supplier of 802.11ac Wave 2 technology to Mimosa for use in multiple outdoor Wi-Fi products. The two companies have also agreed to jointly develop an enhanced physical layer and link.
In addition, Quantenna announced in April that it will introduce a new Wi-Fi chipset in 2015 that will include support for MIMO configurations up to 8x8, enabling speeds up to 10 Gbps. Mimosa indicated that it will use this new Wi-Fi chipset in its future products.
Mimosa has also partnered with Airspan Networks to create what the companies describe as a fully integrated licensed and unlicensed backhaul offering packaged into a compact LTE small cell product. Specifically, Mimosa is integrating its 802.11ac access and backhaul technology into Airspan's AirSynergy small cell product line.
On another front, Mimosa petitioned the FCC in March to open the 10 GHz band for shared and lightly licensed use, drawing the ire of amateur radio operators, which, along with federal and non-federal radiolocation services, constitute the band's current users.
For more:
- see this Mimosa release
Related articles:
Mimosa CEO responds to critics of firm's spectrum-sharing proposal for 10 GHz
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Qualcomm ups Wi-Fi capacity via 802.11ac multi-user MIMO
Mimosa wants FCC to open 10.0-10.5 GHz band for backhaul
Quantenna, Mimosa partner on 802.11ac wave 2 outdoor Wi-Fi products