Smart WiFi 802.11n Multimedia System Unveiled

Posted: Tuesday, November 28, 2006
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Wi-Fi

Advances in WiFi Technology Open Door to Reliable Wireless Distribution of Multiple HDTV Streams, Digital Voice, Music and Data throughout the Home.

Ruckus Wireless said today that it has developed and will demonstrate the first Smart WiFi system based on next-generation 802.11n technology at the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 8-11, 2007.

The company also announced that it has been named an Innovations 2007 Design and Engineering Award Honoree by the Consumer Electronics Association for its popular MediaFlex NG product. The Innovations honor is independently judged based on a variety of criteria such as engineering qualities of the product, unique and novel features and the contribution the product makes to consumers' quality of life.

The Ruckus Wireless demonstration at CES will showcase, for the first time, remarkable advances in WiFi technology that make it possible to reliably transport many HDTV streams, digital voice, music and data throughout the home without costly and cumbersome cabling.

Current products based on draft 802.11n specification allow devices to transmit at speeds greater than 70 Mbps, but they all have problems sustaining the high performance at far distances, challenging locations or in noisy environments.

The Ruckus "Smart-N" technology rejects noise and delivers consistent throughput regardless of location and device placement. By combining the award-winning Ruckus BeamFlex smart antenna technology and SmartCast traffic engineering software with commercial 802.11n silicon, the Ruckus Smart-N system automatically adapts to environmental challenges such as physical obstacles and radio noise to maximize sustainable throughput and minimize performance variability.

"Early Pre-N products failed to fulfill the promise of delivering solid, stable bandwidth to support whole-home high-definition video streams," said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. "This is the killer application that consumers and carriers really care about, and this is what we're demonstrating to the world."

Despite the popularity of wireless IPTV in Europe and Asia, incumbent carriers in North America still rely on wires and are waiting for higher speed wireless technology to support multiple HDTV streams within a home.

Additionally, many U.S. operators and consumer electronics companies are moving toward a "whole-home DVR" model in which a central media center collects all the digital multimedia content and distributes the content in real-time to media receivers around the home.

While WiFi is the ideal in-home distribution technology, performance and coverage variability have prohibited operators from using it for this emerging application. 802.11n is widely viewed as the solution but in reality, it takes much more than simply slapping on a new chipset and adding a few more antennas. An adaptable WiFi system that automatically tunes a myriad of new 802.11n parameters and controls RF signals to ensure predictable performance anywhere in the home has become the new industry benchmark.

802.11n Technology Truths
Heralded as a panacea for bandwidth-hungry applications, 802.11n is the newest WiFi standard developed to dramatically increase the capacity of WiFi networks.

802.11n requires new WiFi silicon equipped with multiple radios on both transmit and receive ends of the connection. To boost overall bandwidth, traffic is segmented into different signal streams and sent simultaneously by the transmit radios. Likewise, multiple radios on the receiver accept and reassemble the parallel signal streams. Current WiFi technology, 802.11a/g supports theoretical maximum performance levels of up to 54 Mbps. 802.11n promises theoretical performance maximums of up to 600 Mbps.

However, the actual gains that consumers experience with the current "Pre- N" products are significantly lower and hampered by wild performance fluctuations caused by interference, obstacles, distance and other uncontrollable determinants. Consequently, despite the periodic high bandwidth bursts, delay- or loss-sensitive applications such as streaming video or voice have remained elusive on "Pre-N" implementations.

Geeky CES Demo Details
Using a prototype Ruckus Smart-N system, three HD video streams will be transmitted simultaneously over 802.11n to three Ruckus Smart-N receivers, each attached to an HD set top box.

The Ruckus Smart-N system combines 3x3 XSPAN(TM) 802.11n silicon technology from Atheros Communications with Ruckus Wireless' BeamFlex-N multi- dimensional antenna and SmartCast traffic engineering software. Patent- pending BeamFlex-N is a dynamically-configurable, multi-polarized antenna system capable of forming thousands of unique antenna patterns to reject interference and focus transmit energy in various directions and orientations. BeamFlex-N thus makes available many distinct signal paths to each of the multiple data streams.

Leveraging from SmartCast, the only IPTV-ready wireless QoS technology in the market, the Ruckus Smart-N system automatically identifies incoming traffic and priorities bandwidth on a per packet basis.

BeamFlex-N selects the best antenna configurations for each packet by identifying the optimum path for each transmit radio and steering signals away from obstacles and interference. With over 1,000 antenna patterns at its disposal, BeamFlex-N extends range and signal coverage, maximizes transmission rates over multiple signal paths and minimizes errors. This delivers higher sustained throughput for jitter and delay-sensitive applications throughout the home. Smart WiFi 802.11n products from Ruckus Wireless are slated to begin shipping in the second half of 2007.

Finally, Ruckus will demonstrate streaming multiple MPEG-4 HD IPTV streams over existing 802.11a/g technology and will demonstrate the transmission of voice over WiFi using dual mode cellular/WiFi phones that will be used to enable fixed mobile convergence.

Source: ABIResearch