Broadcom pushes 802.11ac for faster Wi-Fi

IDG News Service - Gigabit-speed wireless LAN products based on the emerging IEEE 802.11ac standard will start shipping next year and usher Wi-Fi into its next era of high speed and long range, communications chip maker Broadcom said Thursday.

The new technology will use beam-forming, wide bands and multiple antennas to deliver as much as 1.3G bps (bits per second) of real-world throughput, with a longer range and better wall-penetration capability that will help it serve entire homes, said Rahul Patel, vice president of Broadcom's mobile and wireless group. It represents a big step up from 802.11n, the current standard that typically tops out at about 300M bps, he said.

Consumers will need faster Wi-Fi soon to enjoy activities such as sending multiple streams of video to a TV, Patel said. He presented Broadcom's plan for 802.11ac at a media event in San Francisco that also showcased new technologies for home networking and in-car Ethernet. Broadcom makes processors for a broad range of devices, including cellphones, home media gateways, and enterprise and carrier switches.

The home wireless industry has been weighing several wireless technologies to carry high-definition video, which requires high speed and steady connections. Patel doesn't see the 11ac standard as threatened by two of those systems: 11ac could be a better alternative to Wireless HDMI, which is faster but is too expensive so far for mass deployment, he said. WiGig, which is intended to offer as much as 6G bps but over a shorter range, would probably complement 11ac, Patel said.

The company expects 802.11ac products to start shipping in the second half of 2012, and Patel believes the Wi-Fi Alliance may have a certification program in place by the end of next year, though the actual IEEE standard may not be complete by then. When IEEE 802.11n was still under development by the IEEE, products also started shipping with draft-standard technology certified by the Alliance.

Last month, research company In-Stat predicted that sales of 11ac products would grow rapidly after launch, rising from about 1 million routers, clients and attached modems shipped in 2012 to nearly 350 million in 2015. But even then, 11n will dwarf the new standard, being supported on an estimated 1.5 billion units shipping in 2015.

Like 802.11n, the new standard will take advantage of multiple antennas to create more than one stream of traffic. But an 11ac radio that uses just one stream will be about as fast as an 11n radio with three, Patel said. One way the developers of 11ac will achieve the speed boost of three times or more is by using wider bands, taking up 80MHz or 160MHz of spectrum compared with the 40MHz maximum in 11n. The standard defines how multiple devices using those wide bands can coexist peacefully, Patel said.