QCA Independence from Wires Day – 8.02.11
Aug 2, 2011 – San Jose, CA – Qualcomm Atheros (QCA) held an event to celebrate the growing marketplace of wireless and Wifi and the resulting benefits that resulr from being wireless. Qualcomm has been known as being the #1 supplier of cellular radio chips. With the addition of the Atheros products, they are now the #1 supplier in Wifi also.
The short event focused on the wide range of needs and services that has been addressed over time with the 802.11 spec. The prior waves focused on the lower bandwith “a/b/g” versions of the specification. The main stream today focuses on the “n” version of the specification. The new version for high bandwidth that is targetet at video and media based file transfers and interactive system control, is the “ac” version of the spec. (see figure) These stages are described as simple connect, then consume, and finally control.
Qualcomm-Atheros – Wifi Applicaitons
The control sector is beciming a big concern. With the Internet of Things (IOT) based devices, there will be almost 2B Wifi devices and 400K access points by 2015 and data traffic will have to be managed between celluar and WiFi.
IEEE 802.11ac highlights of new standard
The 802.11ac spec addresses the challenge of the 2.4GHz spectrum space by being a 5GHz ONLY spec. The protocol also has a new MAC and a new PHY that have been designed around systematic latency specifications rather than individual delay. The protocol is still asymmetric on speed with download being faster than upload. The spec also includes dynamic bandwidth manangment to help direct the data flow with the 1-4 simultaneous antennas that can be in a target deice. The system also trully uses MIMO in the device. The spec also supports low latency of under 20mS. The low latency allows for a single comress format and method ot be used to still provide a decent QOE for streaming video to a device like a TV dispaly. The new system qupports 256 QAM with byte wide content , making viable to develop an xfer process. An overview of the new features is shown in figure 2,
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