Standard vindicates chipset strategy

The IEEE has now formally adopted the high performance 802.11g wireless local area networking (WLAN) standard for high speed 54Mbit/s WLAN operation.

The IEEE has now formally adopted the high performance 802.11g wireless local area networking (WLAN) standard for high speed 54Mbit/s WLAN operation.

According to Intersil, this final approval is a major industry development which fully validates Intersil's long-term development of chipsets and reference designs to the original draft 802.11g standard and which now conform to the final approved standard for datarates up to 54Mbit/s in the 2.4GHz spectrum with 100% backwards compatible to the existing installed base of over 40 million 802.11b systems worldwide.

"Wireless networks have made tremendous technological advancements in recent years and with the IEEE's final approval of the 802.11g standard, WLANs are now poised for rapid growth and widespread deployment in the home, office and public access hot spots", said Larry Ciaccia, Vice President and General Manager of Intersil's Wireless Networking Product Group.

"Intersil has a long and productive history of established leadership in the IEEE standards activity and was instrumental in supporting and driving the advancement of the 802.11g standard.

The IEEE's decision to include complementary code keying (CCK), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and protection mechanism as mandatory elements of the 802.11g standard, ensures complete backward compatibility with, and higher speeds than today's 802.11b products".

Intersil's new WLAN software solution, Prism Nitro, improves 802.11g throughput by using prioritisation algorithms and enhanced protection mechanisms to significantly increase 802.11g network performance, particularly in mixed mode operation with legacy 802.11b equipment.

Prism Nitro is the first solution for turbocharging 802.11g systems, and most notably, it's done in a way that is fully compliant with the IEEE802.11 standards.

Prism Nitro provides up to up to a threefold improvement in performance for 802.11g clients operating in mixed-mode wireless networks and about 50% greater throughput performance in homogeneous 802.11g-only networks.

The Prism GT chipset achieves the lowest standby current, receive current, and average idle current of any 802.11g solution on the market today.

Testing of 802.11g products available in retail today found that Prism GT's power save mode achieved both the lowest average idle and active currents beating the competition by up to 75%.

Prism GT's receive mode current was also up to 35% lower than competitive solutions.

Both of these factors enable Prism GT to consume lower power than competitive solutions over a wide range of user activity.

"Formal adoption of 802.11g by the IEEE is a huge win for the wireless industry", commented Ciaccia.

"802.11g is an important complement to today's 802.11b products and it meets our customers' demands for significant speed increases in the 2.4GHz band, necessary for multichannel DVD-quality video and CD-quality audio applications".

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