Faster Wi-Fi Standard Moves Forward

Faster Wi-Fi Standard Moves Forward

IEEE 802.11n task group approves draft specification for
much-anticipated, fast next-generation Wi-Fi.

Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
Thursday, January 19, 2006

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.

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.

In the past, Wi-Fi products based on draft standards have been
marketed with the promise of upgradeability to the final standard via
firmware.

On Thursday, immediately following word of the confirmation vote,
Broadcom--a major Wi-Fi chip vendor--announced the availability of a
family of chip sets that it claims are the first to comply with the
draft. The chip sets, called Intensi-fi, include ones that could be
used in routers, notebook PCs, and add-in PC Cards, according to the
company. They are available to manufacturers now in sample quantities.
Broadcom did not provide pricing in the announcement.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/...012006X,00.asp

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