Tarana Wireless -- According to the company's website, Tarana is working on "the industry's first wireless non-line-of-sight, point-to-multipoint, Gigabit wireless backhaul solution." It also says that the company is backed by a "strong investor syndicate," and that the funding secured will enable it to increase its staff from less than 20 employees, which it has today, to more than 50 in the next couple of years. And it's hiring: Tarana is looking for a systems software engineer, a network software engineer, and a DSP engineer.

Tarana's founders are graduates from the University of California, Berkeley. The company did not respond to Light Reading Mobile's request for information.

CBF Networks -- The scant details Light Reading Mobile obtained about this new company were gleaned mostly from job ads on LinkedIn. Here's an excerpt from one of the job postings: "The director of wireless system engineering will be the technology leader of an exciting and fast paced startup team that is developing a revolutionary new product architecture for fiber network extension including backhaul of mobile cellular base station sites." The company is also described as a "venture capital funded early stage wireless startup," in another job ad for a senior RF design engineer. The company is also recruiting a senior wireless embedded firmware engineer.

Kevin Duffy, a former CEO of Proxim Wireless Corp. , is named as CEO and co-founder of CBF Networks, which is located in the San Francisco Bay area.

[Ed note: Thanks goes to our reader "allip" for bringing this company to our attention.]

And here's a refresher on the other startups and relatively new companies in backhaul that Light Reading Mobile has covered:

BLiNQ Networks Inc. – Started in June 2010 after acquiring intellectual property and assets from Nortel Networks Ltd. . The company has raised US$7.4 million in Series A funding from New Venture Partners LLC , Summerhill Venture Partners and the Business Development Bank of Canada . Blinq's CEO is Carleton Miller. (See BLiNQ Secures $7.4M , BLiNQ Backhauls Small Cells and BLiNQ Optimizes Backhaul.)

Blinq has developed a non-line-of-sight system that operates in sub-6GHz time division duplex (TDD) spectrum. The backhaul hub and remote modules can be configured as either point-to-point or as point-to-multipoint.

Bluwan -- The company was spun out from Thales SA (Paris: TCFP.PA) in 2005 and has a point-to-multipoint microwave system for wireless backhaul and broadband access. The products operate in 42GHz TDD spectrum.

Cambridge Communication Systems Ltd. -- This startup is working on a multipoint-to-multipoint microwave system with SON capabilities that operates in 26GHz, 28GHz, 32GHz and 42GHz frequency bands using TDD or frequency division duplex (FDD) spectrum. The company's founders are John Porter and Steve Greaves, who also started Adaptive Broadband Corp. (Nasdaq: ADAP) in 1998 and Cambridge Broadband Networks Ltd. in 2000.

DesignArt Networks -- The Israel-based chip startup has designed backhaul support into its LTE system-on-chips (SoCs) for small cells. (See Chip Startup Spurs Small-Cell Backhaul and DesignArt Beefs Up Small-Cell Backhaul.)

LightPointe Communications Inc. -- This 13-year old Free Space Optics (FSO) company has developed millimeterwave products for the 70GHz and 80GHz frequency bands that boast 1.2Gbit/s speeds over a distance of seven miles. (See LightPointe Gets Into Small Cell Backhaul and LightPointe Intros 80GHz Backhaul.)

Siklu Communications Ltd. -- The Israel-based millimeterwave startup closed a $19 million Series B funding round, in which Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) joined as an investor. The company said it will use its new funds to develop picocell backhaul products for LTE. (See Qualcomm Invests in Small-Cell Backhaul Startup and Siklu Raises $19M.)

Sub10 Systems Ltd. -- Founded in 2010, the millimeterwave startup acquired a wireless product line from Huber+Suhner Inc. in August this year. The products operate in the 60GHz frequency band and can deliver up to 320Mbit/s over a 1-kilometer distance. The company is targeting the 4G small-cell market with its high-capacity radios. (See Backhaul Startup Makes Millimeter-Wave Splash .)

Taqua LLC -- This once Class 5 switch vendor is looking to get onto the small-cell backhaul scene with a non-line-of-sight system that uses 2.5GHz or 2.6GHz TDD spectrum. (See Taqua Debuts Backhaul System and Taqua FAQua.)

— Michelle Donegan, European Editor, Light Reading Mobile