Chipset covers wireless LAN standards

Intersil is sampling its Prism Duette, the world's first dual-band WLAN chipset that combines IEEE802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g standards into a highly integrated two-chip solution.

Intersil is sampling its Prism Duette, the world's first dual-band wireless local area networking (WLAN) chipset that combines IEEE802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g standards into a highly integrated two-chip solution.

Intersil will demonstrate the Prism Duette wirelessly streaming HDTV video at both 2.4 and 5GHz at a major public launch at Comdex in November.

"Prism Duette brings broadband speeds to WLAN applications and will be compelling solution for broad spectrum products aimed at the enterprise, home or public access markets", commented Larry Ciaccia, vice president and general manager for Intersil's Wireless Products Group.

"Putting all capability into just two chips is a major breakthrough that gives designers a higher performance solution that is easier to use and smaller in size".

Prism Duette delivers seamless compatibility for WLANs in both 2.4 and 5GHz bands and is capable of transmitting high-speed video, voice and data at up to 54Mbit/s while remaining 100% backwards compatible to the existing installed base of over 30 million Wi-Fi (802.11b) systems worldwide.

Prism Duette is also 100% standards-compliant and provides an ideal 802.11a, b, g, dual-band WLAN solution.

Initial comparison testing reveals that Prism Duette chipset consistently provides twice the range and throughput compared with currently marketed 802.11a products and over three times the throughput of 802.11b+ products.

"Wireless networking is continuing its strong growth and is rapidly becoming mainstream.

Our Prism Duette solution will address the needs of the mobile user who can now connect to virtually any flavour of Wi-Fi infrastructure, the consumer who can stream multimedia and get whole home coverage, and the workplace where dense user environments exist", said Larry Ciaccia.

"By leveraging our years of experience with 5 and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi we have developed a solution that will bring unique value to our customers and end users".

Prism Duette is the result of over five years of WLAN innovation and IC integration and provides a unique two-chip solution that enables seamless mobility between wireless devices radios operating in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands.

The innovative two-chip solution features a dual-band (2.4 and 5GHz) ZIF chip coupled to an integrated baseband processor and medium access controller (BBP/MAC).

The ZIF (zero IF) architecture avoids the use of an intermediate frequency and all the associated components hence reducing size and cost.

Intersil's BBP/MAC chip integrates dual-band OFDM-based (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) and CCK technology to communicate with both 2.4 and 5GHz WLAN devices.

The adoption of OFDM for use in the 2.4GHz band is a significant milestone in the ongoing evolution of IEEE802.11 WLAN technology.

The new IEEE802.11g standard will offer data rates up to 54 Mbps while supporting full backward compatibility with the hugely popular 802.11b standard, making it the perfect complement to 802.11a technology.

Both 802.11a and 802.11g use a common high rate modulation scheme.

Due to the availability of more spectrum in the 5GHz bands, 802.11a systems will support a least eight nonoverlapping channels, thus supporting a higher user density and easier network scalability.

In comparison, 802.11g devices offer greater range due its lower frequency as well as backward compatibility with legacy 802.11b equipment.

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