Splits starting to appear in 802.11n
Published: Wednesday 25 February, 2004
The companies working on the 108Mbps Wi-Fi standard, 802.11n, expected in late 2005, are already divided on the best approach as the IEEE is poised to issue requests for technology, sparking off the usual war of technology and politics.
Intel is pushing for its own ideas to be adopted into 802.11n, but admits that there are very divided opinions even within its own developer ranks and so is not hopeful of a rapid agreement within the IEEE. The official Intel line is that the new version of Wi-Fi should embrace a range of advanced technologies such as smart antennas, wider channels and new power efficiency techniques. This would make the standard more complex to specify and a bigger leap from the current 54Mbps variants, but would give it a longer shelf life and greater credibility against the emerging proprietary or ‘standards-plus’ WLan technologies that support such technologies.
This view, however, does seem at odds with the main statements from the IEEE working groups to date, which have stressed maintenance of the existing channel size and making ‘n’ a relatively simple step from ‘g’ and ‘a’.
And different Intel groups have varying solutions to how these advanced techniques should be incorporated. The main R&D division advocates doubling the channel width of 802.11 to 40MHz and supporting MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) antenna techniques, with two input and two output antennas as standard. That would give a smooth path to a 200Mbps standard and would lower chip costs, the group argues. Other factions within the company want to keep the channels the same size but use up to eight antennas, though this would increase costs beyond the reach of low end notebooks or consumer devices.
The company hopes to decide on a unified approach – which may be a hybrid of its two ideas - soon and make its final proposal to the IEEE, with May likely to be the date for such proposals to be submitted. Intel itself acquired MIMO technology and patents in 2002.
Other companies, including Atheros, which has been one of the most successful chipmakers at stretching the performance of current Wi-Fi implementations, believe the 108Mbps of ‘n’ is about as far as 802.11 can be pushed and the industry will have to look to new technologies beyond that – with WiMAX, which already supports smart antennas and other advanced techniques, clearly in the frame.
One message that was very clear at the Intel Developer Forum – to avoid a small clique (even Intel itself presumably) running away with the standard, or a political battle like the one that has blighted the UltraWideBand process, it is vital that more companies and experts get involved in the IEEE meetings and processes before final proposals are submitted. “Otherwise some proponents could take this technology in a direction that will not benefit everyone," said one speaker. The loss of credibility of the IEEE process in recent months illustrates how true those words are.
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