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RPG Frog
Blade Runner
Joined: 02 Jan 2004
Posts: 748
Location: the Matrix |
| 802.11n - 600mbs Wireless |
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Next-gen Wi-Fi spec ready for approval
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060112-5963.html
1/12/2006 12:48:01 PM, by Nate Anderson
There's a new acronym in town, one that promises speeds of up to 600Mbps over a wireless link. Technology companies involved in the standards-setting process have finally reached an agreement on the next-gen Wi-Fi spec, which is expected to be ratified next week by the IEEE as 802.11n. The new spec has been a long time coming, and for a while it looked as though manufacturers might go to market with proprietary technology rather than wait for the standards stalemate to get straightened out.
We covered the politics behind the delay in a meaty news post back in October. Basically, the IEEE standards group working on the Wi-Fi spec was split into two camps, neither of which was named by a marketing committee: Task Group N (TGn) and the World-Wide Spectrum Efficiency group (WWiSe). TGn was backed by Intel, Toshiba, Sony, and Qualcomm, while WWiSe was made up of Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia, Motorola, and Airgo Networks. To move a spec out of committee takes more than 75 percent of all votes, and neither group was able to muster more than 56 percent, so a stalemate seemed likely.
Enter Intel. The processor giant also has significant investments in wireless chipset production, and a vested interest in moving the process forward. It is also in their interest to keep confusion out of the Wi-Fi market, so Intel would prefer that companies not go forward with proprietary solutions. The company therefore convened a new group, called the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC), which contained a subset of members from the two other groups. The EWC developed a proposal of its own that drew on elements from the competing proposals. It would still use the unlicensed 2.5Ghz to 5Ghz band for communications, but would add MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) and SDM (Spatial Division Multiplexing) for increased speed. How does this all work? Thus sayeth Hannibal:
"According to Intel's white paper on 802.11n, MIMO is a method of using multiple antennas in both the sender and the receiver to increase the amount of bandwidth and the overall reliability of each link. SDM takes advantage of MIMO by slicing up a single input data stream into multiple parts, which are then transmitted in parallel before being put back into serial order by the receiver."
The proposal came up for a vote on Wednesday, and was accepted by 40 out of 42 companies on the committee (with two abstentions). The compromise will be submitted to the IEEE on Monday at a meeting in Hawaii, but not everyone is pleased with the outcome. Airgo Networks, which has done much of the preliminary work on MIMO and SDM and owns multiple patents on the technology, felt like Intel had hijacked the standards-setting process. There's no doubt that the process turned out well for Intel, since Airgo had already made substantial progress on the WWiSe proposal—progress which now counts for little. This puts Intel on a more equal footing with its rival in the quest to design the chips that will be used in the new equipment.
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Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities…there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars…Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand…to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet. - Robert E. Howard |
Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:25 pm |
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