Wireless chipsets boast boosted ranges

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Sep 17, 2003

Philips has developed highly integrated, high-performance two-chip solutions for 802.11a/g and 802.11g wireless LAN applications.

Philips has developed highly integrated, high-performance two-chip solutions for 802.11a/g and 802.11g wireless LAN applications.

The complete Philips WLAN solutions enable high-speed 802.11a/g or 802.11g wireless networking for data and streaming media, providing excellent range and the industry's highest standards-based data throughput.

Target applications include WLAN adapter cards, access points, gateways, PCs, PC peripherals and consumer electronic devices.

The WLAN market continues to see tremendous growth.

According to Will Strauss, President of Forward Concepts, total sales of 802.11 chipsets will reach $1.6 billion by 2005, up from $364 million last year.

"WLAN has made the transition from niche application to mainstream technology, presenting a solid opportunity for chipmakers.

Multiband, multiprotocol solutions will dominate the wireless industry and play a major role in a new generation of consumer electronics appliances that are entering the market", said Strauss.

"These new 802.11a/g solutions strengthen the Philips portfolio of wireless products and reinforces our vision of a world where everyone can always connect to information, entertainment and services", said Paul Marino, Vice President and General Manager, Connectivity, Philips Semiconductors.

"Superior range and throughput make these chipsets ideal for computing and fast-growing consumer applications and are a strong complement to Philips' Nexperia system-on-chips for connected digital televisions, DVD+RW players and home entertainment hubs".

The Philips dual-mode 802.11a/g chipset combines a single-chip multiprotocol baseband/media access controller (SA5250) with a single-chip RF transceiver (SA5251) for a complete subsystem for IEEE802.11a and 802.11b/g frequency bands.

By supporting 2.4 and 5GHz and the 4.9GHz band used in Japan, the chipset is ideally suited for worldwide use.

With its built-in "detect and connect" functionality that automatically moves to the highest speed connection available (802.11 a, g or b), the Philips 802.11a/g solution gives users the ability to roam freely between 802.11 networks.

The chipset offers excellent range of up to 150m at 11Mbit/s via 802.11b, up to 100m at 54Mbit/s via 802.11g and up to 70m at 54Mbit/s via 802.11a.

The chipset provides the industry's highest standards-based throughput, achieving greater than 98.5% of theoretical Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) maximum throughput in 802.11a, b and g modes.

In addition, the chipset also supports datarates up to 72Mbit/s per channel in an enhanced single-channel 256-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) mode.

Unlike other proprietary enhanced modes, the Philips solution can simultaneously support the enhanced mode and concurrently communicate with other standards-based 802.11 clients.

Featuring an advanced architecture that is programmable to the media access control and physical (PHY) layers, the Philips 802.11a/g chipset is designed to support product enhancements and future IEEE802.11 extensions including 802.11e (improved quality of service), 802.11i (enhanced security) plus 802.11f, h, i and j with firmware upgrades.

The Philips chipset is also designed to support Wi-Fi Multimedia Extensions (WME) for improved quality of service, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) with Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and the Cisco Compatible Extension (CCX) programme, which offers security, virtual LAN capabilities and Cisco's proprietary LEAP authentication protocol.

Philips offers complete evaluation kits for the 802.11a/g and 802.11g chipsets that include: MiniPCI and CardBus reference designs, software drivers for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and pSOS operating systems and a graphical user interface.

The chipsets are also supported with a complete set of production test utilities and diagnostic tools.

Philips 802.11a/g and 802.11g chipsets are currently sampling to lead customers and will be available in production quantities in Q4 2003.

Philips will demonstrate the new 802.11a/g chipset at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, 22nd-26th September 2003.