...from: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1829128,00.asp

Intel Research Merges Centrino With 802.11n By Mark Hachman June 17, 2005

Intel will present a paper Friday that will demonstrate its progress toward integrating the current Wi-Fi technologies with the next- generation 802.11n protocol. At the 2005 VLSI Symposium on Circuits in Kyoto, Japan, Intel executives will present two papers, one on integrating a 2.4/5-GHz WLAN as well as a second on a 90-nm filter chain. Intel speakers will show off photographs of a prototype chip.

While the papers don't describe a landmark breakthrough, they do provide proof that Intel can take an incremental next step and integrate the 802.11n component into its existing Centrino chipset, according to Manny Vara, a technology strategist with Intel. [...]

...from: http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA445702

802.11n: The Next WLAN Frontier By Suzanne Deffree -- Electronic News, 8/19/2004

The wireless industry is raring to go with its next connectivity technology, 802.11n. But before the 100Mbit/sec. minimum throughput wireless LAN technology can see a standard, things could get ugly. The successor to 802.11a/g aimed at consumer applications that require very high throughput, like HDTV and streaming video, 802.11n passed the proposal posting phase at the IEEE last week with an expected 60-plus groups and individual companies laying out what they hope will win the wireless organization's eventual approval. The odds are heavily laid in the favor of two equally matched groups, TGn Sync and WWiSE -- each of which recently sent out news releases cheering themselves on and purposefully pitched their plans to the media.

TGn Sync, which stands for task group n synchronization, holds Intel, Agere, Atheros, Sony and Philips among its ranks. While WWiSE, standing for worldwide spectrum efficiency, includes such companies as Broadcom, Conexant, Texas Instruments, Airgo and STMicroelectronics. What both consortiums agree on is the use of MIMO, multiple input multiple output antenna technology, to take 802.11n to its promised throughput. Where they mostly differ is on channel bands. TGn looks to use 40MHz channels in the 5GHz spectrum, the same one used by 802.11a, while WWiSE prefers 20MHz channels in the 2.4GHz consistently used 802.11b/g spectrum, explains Phil Solis, a senior analyst at ABI Research.

"It's not like one side is heavy against the other. The biggest difference is that the WWiSE group wants to stay with 20MHz bands so they don't tie up too many channels," he said. "Both groups will use some form of MIMO technology, it's just that the WWiSE group wants to be more conservative with the spectrum and use other methods to bring the speeds up. The concern of WWiSE in using a 20MHz band is a reasonable one, if you are going to be in the 2.4MHz space where there are only three nonoverlapping channels. But in the 5MHz band in the United States, there are 24 channels and none overlap with b and g." Agere, for one, argues that use of TGn's channel plan could increase 802.11n's minimum 100Mbits actual throughput speed fivefold. The company's personal end target: 500Mbits/sec. "If I widen the channel to 40MHz, I can get 125Mbits of data through, just with the wider channel. If I add MIMO to that, another transmitter, then I go to 250Mbits," remarked Mary Cramer, strategic marketing manager and Agere's business representative for the IEEE task force n group. "I can realistically go up to four transmitters and get 500Mbits. In this proposal we are asking for a mandatory two transmitters -- because it's more realistic for power and cost -- and to be capable of 40MHz channels, and that would make up 250Mbits for an 802.11n device." Conexant's rebuttal on behalf of WWiSE is that it's not just about speed, but also about future spectrum availability and backward Wi-Fi compatibility to 802.11b/g. "20MHz channel width is consistent with the frequency plan used in all our legacy 802.11 equipment sold to date," Jim Zyren, executive director, wireless and residential gateway access products at Conexant, said, adding that the use of 20MHz channels helps conserve unlicensed spectrum. "We've all heard anecdotal evidence of crowded spectrum and interference in the 2.4GHz unlicensed domain. As a group we feel we have just scratched the surface in terms of global Wi-Fi adoption. Now is the time to begin implementing spectrum conservation measures. By making 20MHz channels a mandatory element of our proposal, we'll ensure maximum utilization of the existing channels before resorting to the use of wider channels." The Curse of Ultra Wideband

Beyond MIMO and channel use, both groups agree that no one wants to end up like ultra wideband technology. UWB, which is still awaiting final ratification, has been tossed and twirled about IEEE for more than a year now as the proposal parties can't seem to agree on common ground.

"One of the other main group's technology is some what similar to ours and in some ways it isn't," Agere's Cramer said, alluding to WWiSE and its use of MIMO. "I don't think this is going to be like UWB and the situation that has happened there, where the whole standard is just locked up because people can't agree on it."

ABI Research noted in a recent report that had UWB come to market quicker its superior speeds to wireless LAN may have made it more of a contender for applications in the home. Having 802.11b/g already staked out in the home gives it a significant advantage over UWB, Solis said.

"Wi-Fi will continue to work its way into home entertainment networking, and will become entrenched," the analyst said in the report. "By the time UWB comes out -- or just a little later -- 802.11n solutions will start to appear."

Both sides are hoping that UWB's IEEE curse will be avoided and compromises will be made … just not anytime soon. With the next meeting to discuss the proposals set for September, TGn and WWiSE aren't expecting a first draft specification to come down the pike until at mid-to-late 2005 and are eyeing a final spec in 2006.

That hasn't stopped anyone from starting to plan out their products, though, with proper marketing. While both Agere and Atheros have released consumer-oriented HDTV and video products based on ultra- fast data transmission using principles of their group's proposal, they have been careful not to promote them as "pre-n" technology.

"I think anyone who claims their product is pre-n, given that first proposals haven't been made, would be really stepping out wide," Atheros Product Line Manger Sheung Li said. "What makes pre-n product so premature now is that if you launch such a thing, then you can only talk to such products from the same manufacturer and you don't get any performance gains when talking to a, b or g equipment."

But product appearance on shelves before ratification has a strong history in WLAN. 802.11n's predecessor 802.11g went down that path, with technology out about six months before the IEEE had give its green light to the 54Mbit specification.

"The market's perception has been shaped by the experience that we went through collectively in the 802.11g space. The take-away everyone got from 802.11g was that we are going to see products in the market before the standard is finally ratified," Zyren said.

...other links of interest: - updates following the 802.11n standard: http://wifinetnews.com/ archives/cat_80211n.html - 2MHz-3G cellphone-UWB crosstalk: http://www.ultrawidebandplanet.com/ technology/article.php/2173501 - http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/mofaq/rcomms/uwbfaqs/#content - Fat pipes from thin air?: http://www.networkmagazine.com/shared/ article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=8703372&classroom= - Find you way around the RF spectrum: http://www.techworld.com/ features/index.cfm?featureID=212&printerfriendly=1 - The A to Z of wireless terms: http://www.techworld.com/features/ index.cfm?featureID=212&printerfriendly=1