Artemis Networks demos 20 iPads running HD video via one 5 MHz LTE channel

We won’t be there to confirm it, but Artemis Networks is scheduled to demonstrate its latest trick today at the Code Conference, using its revolutionary pCell network gear to stream video simultaneously to 20 Apple iPads via a single 5 MHz LTE channel.

In case you’re not a networking or cellular nerd, the ability to send that much data to a cluster of nearby devices is basically un-doable with currently deployed LTE technologies. What makes the trick possible is Artemis’s new method of combining signal interference to provide a direct connection to each client device, something that has worked well in demos but as of yet has no commercial deployment.

Still, with the track record of entrepreneur CEO Steve Perlman, best known for developing QuickTime and WebTV, it’s a good bet that Artemis will deliver something, sometime soon, to a paying customer. Artemis, which quickly added Wi-Fi and stadium networking to its target lists, says its technology addresses the big problem facing networks in large public venues, according to Perlman, who spoke with MSR in a phone interview earlier this week.

“The biggest strain on a [stadium] system is HD video,” said Perlman. And though many stadiums are adding Wi-Fi networks, almost all right now have some kind of enhanced cellular infrastructure or a cellular DAS, which these days includes LTE. A cluster of LTE devices close together trying to run video, Perlman said, “is exactly the problem [stadium networks] are facing today.”

Artemis’s pCell technology currently works only with LTE networks, though the company is working on developing a version for Wi-Fi as well. Part of the lure of the technology is that it works with off-the-shelf client devices; at the demonstration Thursday Perlman was scheduled to add the 20th iPad to his “wall of iPads” by unpacking it right at the event, to show how nothing needs to be done to client devices to add them to a pCell network.