Start-ups ready to tackle 5GHz wireless LAN

By Darrell Dunn and Bruce Gain
EBN
(08/27/01, 12:58:45 PM EDT)

Although 2.4GHz wireless LAN is only now beginning to gain momentum after several years of merely inching ahead, a couple of frisky start-ups are planning to leap-frog long-established players with products aimed at the next-generation 5GHz market.

Industry stalwarts like Intersil Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. say they are beginning to see greater use of devices compliant with the IEEE 802.11b standard, and are hashing out in committee a 802.11g interim hybrid standard. But upstarts Atheros Communications Inc. and Resonext Communications Inc. are having none of that. Instead, they are targeting the emerging 802.11a standard, each touting process enhancements beyond the current implementations.

Robert Fan, vice president of marketing and sales at San Jose-based Resonext, says the alphabet soup standards mix currently swirling in the WLAN market could stall the technology's developing momentum, and believes an eventual move to 802.11a will provide the necessary answers.

“The advantages of 802.11a are obvious-higher data rates, higher capacity, and more applications, and some of the concerns such as high cost, more limited range [than 802.11b], and high power consumption are being addressed,” he said.

Resonext has introduced what it believes is the first Zero-IF architecture for 802.11a, with both the RF and baseband chips implemented in CMOS process technology. The architecture converts signals directly to the baseband, without using an intermediate frequency.

Last year, Atheros, Sunnyvale, Calif., introduced what it hailed as the first pure-CMOS chipset for 802.11a products.

The 802.11a standard potentially offers two to five times greater bandwidth than 802.11b or 802.11g, pushing the rate to 54Mbits/s and eventually as high as 72Mbits/s. 802.11a devices also operate in the less-congested 5GHz band, compared with the 2.4GHz frequency used for 802.11b or 802.11g.

Getting into the 802.11a market early offers a needed advantage for new companies such as Atheros and Resonext, according to Stan Bruederle, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., San Jose. “But in the end, it depends on how well they execute,” he said. “Companies like Intersil have demonstrated they can deliver wireless LANs and have credibility in 802.11b, which certainly bleeds over into 802.11a as well.”

TI is currently concentrating its efforts on 802.11b, but will also address the 802.11a market as it matures, said Mike Hogan, general manager of the company's Wireless Networking Business Unit in Dallas.

“The situation here is not unique to wireless LAN,” Hogan said. “There's always a great deal more talk than walk in the beginning. Clearly, Zero-IF, CMOS, or quasi-CMOS solutions are going to be a good piece of gear when they're ready for prime time and can ship in volume.

“There are really only three suppliers of 2.4GHz radios today [Intersil, Philips, and RF Micro Devices], and if you want to believe those press releases [from Atheros and Resonext], within six months they're going to have ready the most aggressive architecture, Zero-IF, using the most aggressive process, CMOS, and at a 5GHz rate,” Hogan said. “But if you look at history in general, the promises of early entrants are always out ahead of the deliverables.”

WLAN is clearly gaining momentum, partly at the expense of other technologies like Bluetooth, according to Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts Co., Tempe, Ariz. 802.11b, he said, will continue to make up the bulk of actual shipments for the next year or two.

“802.11b is where the market is now, and 802.11a is plowing new ground, but it will be slow growing as the infrastructure builds,” Strauss said. “You can certainly argue that Atheros and Resonext have put a stake in the ground and will be positioned to be players as the 5GHz band opens up.”

Intersil controls 80% of the 802.11b market, and plans to have samples of 802.11a devices based on a silicon germanium process by the end of the year, said Jim Zyren, director of strategic marketing for wireless networking at the Irvine, Calif., company.

“Having new IC players in the market is a good thing because they'll help grow it,” Zyren said. “We plan to offer our customers what they want and will also grow our market share.”

Atheros said it is ramping volume production quantities of its AR5000 802.11a chipset. Resonext plans to begin sampling its chipset early next year, with production scheduled for midyear.