by Playfuls Staff |
20th January 2006
Technology and telecommunications have been advancing with huge steps during the past few years. And one of the best examples is that of the Wi-Fi standards. Thus, the first WiMax products have just been launched on the market, and companies have already developed its successor. [more]
According to the IDG News Service, the task group working on a new, faster standard for Wi-Fi, called 802.11n, has settled on a draft proposal that will now be refined into a final specification.
Approval of the draft 802.11n spec ends a long struggle between camps backing two main proposals for the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) standard. Both would have used multiple antennas to achieve the real-world throughput of at least 100 megabits per second that the original 802.11n proposal calls for.
The plan approved Thursday at a general meeting of the IEEE 802.11n Working Group in Kona, Hawaii, was based on a proposal announced last fall by the Enhanced Wireless Consortium, a group of Working Group members formed outside of the IEEE. An EWC statement said the draft proposal, which includes modifications from a committee within the IEEE's Working Group, will support throughput of up to 600 mbps.
802.11n will allow notebook users to connect to wireless access points at much faster speeds than currently available with 802.11g technology. It will use a technology called MIMO (multiple-in, multiple-out), which allows the chips to use multiple antennas that can each handle more than one data signal at a time. This is expected to improve the range and throughput of 802.11n products to the point where they should be able to send video content around a house without interrupted playback. Products with 802.11n chips will be able to work with older 802.11a/b/g products at their slower speeds.
There is still work to do on the draft before it can be ratified as a final standard, according to Bill McFarland, chief technology officer of Atheros Communications and a voting member of the task group. Once the proposal has been formatted according to IEEE rules, it will go out to a group of engineers across the 802.11 Working Group, which is responsible for all wireless LAN standards. Those engineers will point out problems if they see them, and the draft will be modified and put to more votes until it gets more than 75 percent approval among those voters, McFarland says.
Finally, an even broader group of IEEE members will vote on final ratification. McFarland believes that is likely to happen near the end of this year or in early 2007. However, products built according to the draft specification should reach customers around the middle of this year, according to McFarland.
Broadcom announced Thursday that it was immediately shipping a new group of Wi-Fi chips called Intensi-Fi that is compatible with the draft standard. The company claimed the new chips could provide data rates up to 300M bps (bits per second), although real-world speeds are generally lower.
Broadcom also claimed that the Intensi-Fi chips would be compatible with the final version of the 802.11n standard through firmware upgrades to products using the chips. This touched off a heated rebuke from Airgo Networks, which already makes chips that use the MIMO technology at the heart of the 802.11n draft standard.
"The only event that consumers can count on to guarantee compatibility is W-Fi Alliance certification," Greg Raleigh, chief executive officer of Airgo, said in an interview Thursday.
The Wi-Fi Alliance is expected to begin certifying products in early 2006, Airgo's Raleigh said. Final ratification is expected to follow soon after, he said.
