802.11n

Airgo was a pioneer in commercializing multiple-antenna (multiple-in/multiple-out or MIMO) technology for the mass market. While one might quibble with some of the particulars of their marketing or their confidence in their precise technology decisions, there s no question that they were the first to market with Wi-Fi plus MIMO, that they helped set the direction of the industry towards MIMO, and that they continue to be a significant player although that significance was in danger of being challenged by the success of MIMO as a component in wireless data networking. Their acquisition by Qualcomm ensures their future relevance.

Qualcomm says they ll continue to support Airgo s lines of business, but will also integrate their Wi-Fi technology into the Mobile Station Modem chipsets and Snapdragon platform, both of which are designed to give Qualcomm a full place at the converged table, in which cellular data is one of multiple options for connectivity. MIMO makes it possible to carry more data over the same frequencies through reuse of those frequencies across space (spatial multiplexing), while also increasing receive sensitivity and transmission clarity, resulting in greater effective area covered by a transceiver. A made my head spin.

Airgo is claiming the availability of 802.11n Draft 2.0 chipsets that are fully backward compatibility with Draft 1.

0 features, and 802.11a/b/g. Now this is hard to swallow given that Draft 2.

0 won t be actually voted on until March 2007. In fact, the the group responsible for the drafts explains that 370 technical comments are left to address (88 percent have been gone through) with expected approval on the resolution of those comments by the January meeting. Only by that happening would a ballot be created that could then be approved for the March 2007.

So I have to ask what kind of crack is Airgo/Qualcomm smoking, and how do I get me some? I d love to be able to exist simultaneously four months in the future and today; it would make investing much easier. This announcement from a company that denounced Draft 1.

0 chip releases is especially rich. I expect we will get all kinds of qualifications from Qualcomm, and all kinds of denunciations from competing chipmakers. What they will certainly claim is something like, Based on our expectations of how the final 370 comments will be addressed, we currently comply with the state of Draft 2.

0 in progress. That is, they will claim compliance with a DRAFT OF A DRAFT and state that with a straight face. This is why I am not in marketing.

Update on 2.0: In email with an Airgo spokesperson, the company stated that the chips will include all possible iterations of ideas still under discussion and incorporate everything that could possibly be in 2.0.

This is probably true. But there s a great difference between we anticipate Draft 2.0 and we re Draft 2.

0 compliant, which is logically and linguistically impossible. Airgo s CEO newly minted VP of wireless connectivity at Qualcomm Greg Raleigh : We ve had a year of debate and negotiation in the IEEE, says Raleigh. In that time, lots of features have been introduced as possibilities for 802.

11n and Airgo plans to support just about everything that s come up. In fact, he says Airgo argued to include most of them while some other vendors argued to have features taken out. Another update: who said that availability doesn t mean that chips are available.

With no possibility of a Draft 2.0 design until after then, Qualcomm vice president Enrico Salvatori admitted to us that the Draft 2.0 silicon was not actually available was planned for sample quantities in the second half of 2007.

Airgo, by the way, has a pile of patents, and while I haven t heard boo so far about them attempting to enforce these in any fashion and as a participant in IEEE, they ve had to agree to certain licensing terms I expect Qualcomm to follow its usual aggressive strategy. Which means bloody noses, lawsuits, and so on. Qualcomm is in the midst of being sued by and suing a variety of competitors, involving patents that parties claim other parties have used without permission and the cost of patent royalties.

Qualcomm announced another purchase today, too. The deal is described as Qualcomm acquiring the majority of RF Micro Devices Bluetooth assets, which is a little difficult to parse, but ostensibly means patents, processes, licenses, and inventories. The company has often trash-talked claims that 802.

11n s increased bandwidth produces a natural solution for moving media and integrating many kinds of communication over the same wireless network. They have a point. While the typical 802.

11n network, in the version expected to be certified in spring, will offer 150 Mbps to 300 Mbps of raw speed, and more expensive, later versions will carry 600 Mbps of raw data, these speeds are highly dependent on the amount of available signal reflection, the distance between adjacent receiving clients, and the number of other Wi-Fi networks (new and old) nearby. To achieve the highest rates of speed, each spatial stream has to be fully employed using double-wide, 40 MHz channels. That will be possible intermittently even on the best networks.

Ruckus says that at January s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), they will show a set of devices that incorporates both 802.11n for speed and their proprietary technology that gets good reviews in its 802.11g version for keeping stutter-free video, drop-free voice, and consistent data pumping across a network.

They even take shots at 802.11n in this press release, noting that despite the periodic high bandwidth bursts, delay- or loss-sensitive applications such as streaming video or voice have remained elusive on Pre-N implementations. As with all these systems, the proof will be in deployed home networks, which will likely come through the kind of partnerships the company already has in place with independent telephone companies and other operators that are deploying IPTV and converged services.

But with claims of supporting HDTV streams, Ruckus might have a direct-to-consumer offering as well; it just depends how hard it is to uncouple digital media from digital rights management. Ruckus s 802.11n system will use , which the chipmaker claims will offer 300 Mbps physical data rate and 150 to 180 Mbps of real-world throughput.

It uses two data streams and three sets of receive and transmit antennas. ASUS said in a press release this morning that purchasers of their Broadcon Intensi-Fi Draft N-based WL-500W gateway and WL-100W adapter are guaranteed firmware or hardware upgrades to the ratified version of 802.11n.

The units must be purchased before Dec. 31, 2006, to qualify. ASUS is guaranteeing that for three months following the ratification, they will provide whatever is necessary to assure full N compatibility.

If hardware is required, purchasers will have that period of time to return their equipment at their expense; ASUS will pay shipping back to the consumer. This is so not a sucker bet, but a great move on ASUS s part. As I ve written many times in the past, there is no guarantee that current generations of Draft N chips will be firmware upgradable, but there s also no assumption that they will not be upgradable.

Because ASUS is offering this guarantee only for this calendar year, and putting the upgrade period at probably March 2008, the expected ratification, its likely that very few purchasers will, in fact, request hardware upgrades even if hardware upgrades are required. In the meantime, Broadcom and ASUS will certainly be posting a stream of firmware upgrades as those are needed. The next logical step, of course, is that other computer makers and equipment makers offer the same deal, like Dell and Linksys.

There s a multi-million-dollar risk behind this, of course, but a guarantee would almost certainly accelerate current purchases of equipment. The marketing and sales folks at many firms should be huddled over spreadsheets today, wondering how to launch a Draft N Guaranteed! campaign that will push more current revenue without booking huge liabilities.

Matthew Gast was my guest Wednesday for a live, in-office podcast in which we talked at great length about Task Group N, the group within the IEEE 802.

11 Working Group, that s attempting to push faster Wi-Fi at the world. Matthew is a voting member of the group, and we talk about the politics, the technology, and, you know, how fast this stuff will actually be when it s released. We also delve a bit into voice and why 802.

11n is important for handheld devices and how handset manufacturers worked hard to get their interests served in the compromises that appear to have led to current state of the protocol. Matthew is the author of O Reilly and Associates s , which came out in its extensively revised and updated 2nd edition last year. [44 min.

, XX MB, MP3] The Wi-Fi Alliance said today it would offer a two-phase plan to keep 802.11n s innovation moving along: With the next potential draft approval of the faster wireless data standard from engineering standards group IEEE s Task Group N looking like it won t appear until March 2007, the Wi-Fi Alliance has chosen to step in to stabilize the market. The first phase of certification will confirm compliance to what they expect will be Draft 2.

0 in March, the next letter ballot in which Task Group N voters agree to an extensive set of changes to Draft 1.0. The compliance will be coupled with interoperability testing, so that devices labeled with their phase 1 branding yet to be determined will work together at the right speeds.

The second phase will be tied to a ratified standard, which may come by spring 2008. Ratification usually takes up to six months after final technical details are decided on and approved within a task group, so the standard will likely be gelled by fall 2007. Wi-Fi Alliance managing director Frank Hanzlik said in an interview today that should the March 2007 meeting not produce another draft, the alliance would assemble the closest possible set of agreed-on ideas to produce their certification standard.

(The news was scheduled to be released tomorrow morning; broke the embargo this evening.) Products that comply with phase 1 certification for draft 802.11n could be on the market through firmware upgrades or new hardware releases by June 2007, but it s likely that devices that start to hit the market by early 2007 will more and more closely conform with what will be certified.

We actually are doing a lot of formal interoperability testing within the alliance with pre-standard products, said Hanzlik, and this ongoing work should reduce the time between the draft s approval and certification approval. (The alliance has opened more worldwide testing labs in recent months, too, which should distribute its certification work for faster completion.) Phase 1 products aren t guaranteed to be forward-compatible with phase 2 products.

The forward-compatibility part is certainly too hard to call at this point; it s not anything that the alliance is committing to, Hanzlik said. However, they are stressing that compatibility among the phase 1 and 2 products would be highly stressed. Phase 1 products will almost certainly have none of the optional elements for 802.

11n, such as larger antenna arrays that produce higher throughputs. Some of these optional elements remain points of discussion, and will be less settled until further drafts are developed. Another major issue outstanding is the manner by which 802.

11n devices will interact with legacy adapters and legacy networks, whether on the same Wi-Fi network, same Wi-Fi channel, or on adjacent Wi-Fi channels. That is expected to be resolved for the next letter-ballotted draft, which should be Draft 2.0.

This intermediate approach to 802.11n certification echoes the earlier interim security measure, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), that the alliance put into place when the work on 802.11i lingered far longer than the market and manufacturers would tolerate, with the failure of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) as a reliable link encryption method.

WPA was available a year before 802.11i s final ratification, and stabilized the security concerns of the market. The later WPA2, which included the strong AES encryption method, entered the industry with relative seamlessness.

Of course, WPA had more to do with retrofitting a security model to work on older devices without leaving newer devices with less protection, and was a good-enough security system; WPA2 almost serves a different market, in which government-grade encryption algorithms are required and fast handoff for authentication, mobile devices like VoWLAN handsets is critical. With 802.11n, the standard has to work on the lowliest to most sophisticated device, and there s a lot of hardwiring in silicon that can t be fixed later, so the standard has to be right when devices are released.

That s been one of my primary objections to Draft N gear. I have consistently said that you should not buy Draft N gear because there are significant advantages for most users. Buying MIMO gateways makes a lot of sense if you want better 802.

11g speeds over greater areas. That technology is now relatively mature, relatively compatible, and relatively cheap. Draft N devices are quite expensive (Atheros ), don t seem to deliver range and speed in testing (see ), and have no guarantee of full upgradability when the final 802.

11n standard is delivered. (Intel said today in the first half of 2007, but Intel is on the board of the Wi-Fi Alliance, and thus knew this certification was coming when they made this statement.) First, with 802.

11n s ratification pushed back nearly a year from the expectation just a few months ago, there s now a reason to bring today s capabilities into today s equipment. When ratification was just a few months away, having an entire generation of equipment that would be potentially incapable of forward compatibility or upgrade seemed ridiculous. Now, it s a reasonable market choice given a 12-to-18-month lifespan for the right kind of user.

(The equipment will obviously continue to work after the ratification, too, and have its own value as it will retain interoperability and other benefits that current Draft N devices can t guarantee.) Second, the Wi-Fi Alliance is waiting for Draft 2.0 or its equivalent.

This allows a host of compromises to be made in the year between Draft 1.0 and 2.0, and technical problems to be solved.

There should be an ocean of difference from Draft 1.0 to 2.0 in terms of basic problems being solved.

Today s Draft N devices promise compliance to a draft that will be superceded, and offer no hardware upgrade promise when and if that happens if firmware upgrades fail to suffice. Third, the alliance will offer a brand that I confirmed with Hanzlik will be clearly differentiated in phase 1 and 2. This won t offer consumers or businesses any implicit promise about forward compatibility.

This reduces confusion in the marketplace and provides a clear message to equipment buyers that they are buying gear that may be superceded later, but has value now. Fourth, the interoperability and conformance testing by the Wi-Fi Alliance will smooth out the rough spots in using devices from different manufacturers together. Some early equipment plays very poorly with its friends (similar devices from other makers) and neighbors (nearby networks).

The alliance s process has worked in the past. So, I can t say right now, go out and buy Phase One gear, because it has no name and doesn t exist. But I will predict with some degree of certainty that devices that start shipping in late winter 2007 will likely offer enough carrots for those who need higher performance or greater area networks to start thinking about purchase, and what s for sale by June 2007 (and certified) will be good investments in the next generation of Wi-Fi.

: The Dell Wireless 1500 draft-802.11n dual-band wireless card will use the Intesi-fi technology that Broadcom has developed in advance of an industry-approved standard for 802.11n.