Faster Wi Fi gets go ahead

At the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) taskgroup meeting in Hawaii recently, there was an agreement over the next high speed Wi-Fi standard, 802.11n.

The long-anticipated 802.11n specification will operate in the same 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands as today's Wi Fi and as an added bonus, it will be backwards compatible.

The benefits? 802.11n will be way faster -- between 100-600 Mbps. The new fast WiFi standard should allow offices to replace 100 Mbps ethernet with wireless and it will provide fast wireless networking for multi-media inside homes. The specification includes improved power management for handheld devices, unlike some of the earlier 802.11 specifications. Beamforming and space"time block coding (STBC), methods of improving the reliability and efficiency, are also included.

After months of haggling between TGn Sync and WwiSE, the two industry groups that had been working to settle on a standard, the IEEE unanimously voted in favour of the proposal from the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC), a group led by chipmakers Intel, Marvell, Atheros and Broadcom.

The EWC was formed in October to accelerate adoption of an 802.11n standard.

IEEE's decision means that ratification of an 802.11n standard can finally move forward, a process that industry analysts and 11n task group members say will take about a year, with the first products hitting the market shortly thereafter.