Pre-802.11n Offers 4x the Speed

An anonymous reader writes "Belkin said on Monday that they'll be releasing a wireless network card and router that uses pre-802.11n multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology created by Airgo Networks. Belkin said the new pre-n products will provide four times faster speed and coverage area than 802.11b and g products. The new products will also be compatible with older products and in fact will increase performance on those older products."

Re:wireless vs wire

[peculiarmethod]

yup, I agree. I live under a flight path in san diego.. 2 miles outside of downtown, and 8 miles from the airport. Every 15 mins or so, abotu every 5th airplane, they are either low enough, or a specific type of airplane broadcasting signals strong enough to interfer with my wireless network. It only take 20-45 secs to re-establish the connection.. but you must agree this is not acceptable for some routines online, and obviously does not happen with hard wire.

pm

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Wi-Fi Gets Speed Boost with Pre-802.11n Products
Posted: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 11:38:03 GMT
Author: Matt Cameron

Belkin said on Monday that they'll be releasing a wireless network card and router that uses pre-802.11n multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology created by Airgo Networks. Belkin said the new pre-n products will provide four times faster speed and coverage area than 802.11b and g products. The new products will also be compatible with older products and in fact will increase performance on those older products.

"Our research shows that, with current wireless technology, people are experiencing poor coverage and performance at farther distances in their homes due to interference from other wireless networks, cordless phones, and other appliances," explains Eric Tong, VP Marketing and Product Development. "Our Pre-N products with True MIMO will empower users by providing a wireless network that makes poor coverage issues a thing of the past."

Belkin utilizes True MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) from Airgo Networks in its Pre-N products. True MIMO is the first technology to address the issues of coverage, speed, and interference in larger homes and offices.

True MIMO is a smart-antenna technique that uses multiple antennas to transmit and receive wireless signals. It reaches a step further than other smart-antenna technologies by transmitting multiple signals on each antenna. As a result, Belkin's Pre-N products with True MIMO technology create a robust wireless connection while providing a larger coverage area with the bandwidth and quality of service needed to run advanced applications, such as streaming video or Voice over IP (VoIP).

True MIMO is one of the underlying technologies being considered for 802.11n, a standard in the works for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology.

"True MIMO is a breakthrough technology that fundamentally changes the way radio waves are sent and received. More importantly, True MIMO changes the way consumers are able to use wireless products," says Greg Raleigh, Chief Executive and President of Airgo Networks. "The immediate performance benefits realized with True MIMO, especially over expanded coverage areas, are why this technology has been chosen to power the upcoming 802.11n high-performance wireless standard. Reliability rivaling that of wired connections and effortless connectivity at real-world distances is why Belkin's True MIMO products have ushered in a new era in wireless."

Re:Multiple signals?

[shawn_f]

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/tech/2004/072604techu pdate.html [nwfusion.com]

I think this may answer, not only your question, but a lot of others here on MIMO...seems to be pretty cool technology. More antennas, though, generally mean more power consumption...

Re:must have more speed

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Isn't Verizon doing FTTP with up to 30mbit speeds available? Some people have cable speeds of 6mbit downlink, which is a bit more than what "b" can provide in useable bitrate.

It isn't prohibitively costlier to go with "g". It is like, 4x faster for only 10$ per component? If you must scrape every dollar, then $10 savings is important, but I'd think for the long term, it is worth while.

Re:must have more speed

[bogie]

Just some quick points. While 802.11b is faster than most people's high speed connection that's not true for all. Cable Providers like Optimum Online( a decent size provider in the NJ/NY area) and others give about 10Mb and sometime higher connections. My Orinoco gold card tops out at like 440KB a sec which didn't come near my Internet top speed. So that's not really true in all cases. Secondly if you like many people do have a home network 802.11g makes a huge difference. Transferring large files via 802.11b is painful to say the least.

Should people preorder this from Belkin? I think not just yet. But for anyone on a home network or lucky enough to live where they give out fast net connection 802.11g is well worth the investment. You did specifially say "but only use it to surf the Internet." so in that case your are pretty much right on I just wanted to point out a few reasons why 802.11g isn't so bad an idea.

Re:Contradiction?

[Doug Dante]

Has "True MIMO" already "been chosen" to power 802.11n, or is merely "being considered"?

According to this Intel Whitepaper [linuxdevices.com] both MIMO and an increase in channel widths from 20MHz to 40MHz will both be required to meet the 100Mbps performance goals of 802.11n. (See Figure 2)

So, it's merely being considered, but it's also pretty much a given for 802.11n.

Re:Multiple signals?

[ductormalef]

You are buying the wrong phones then. There is nothing magical about the frequency that makes 2.4 and 5GHz phones better.

Get yourself a nice DSSS 900MHz phone and you'll get every bit of the audio *quality that the more expensive 2.4 and 5GHz phones have.

*Telephone signals can hardly be referred to as quality audio :)

Re:ah, let the consumer trickery begin

[sglane81]

Corporations need to learn to write clear, concise blurbs for their packaging, so customers don't feel ripped off or mislead (and never buy their products again as a result).

They choose not to write clear for marketing purposes. The whole point is to sell more products to people who don't understand the technology. They are only bound by laws of truth in advertising (hmm... <insert witty statement here>). Basically, they can't lie about the product. They can mislead (even intentionally), but not lie.

Clarity for 802.11 TgN

[Zabu]

Task Group N is still in the mix.
TgN's point of focus is to offer better wireless service. It will operate in the frequency range 5.18 Ghz and 5.32 Ghz. The current frequency range that all 802.11a products use. I think the plan is to use the OFDM rates of .11a with 802.11e (QoS). Using MIMO on all stations, with DLP (802.11e) would in fact allow stations to communicate through eachother, instead of the access point. Relaying signals on multiple frequencies through stations would give better coverage, and with DLP essentially cutting all station-2-station traffic in half would free up the medium (their idea of faster?). Either way it is still not going to be around for a while.

Re:n[bg]

[Zabu]

802.11 n will use 802.11e (Qos) which introduces Direct Link Protocol (DLP). This allows station to station transfer. Currently in infrastucture mode you can only communicate with the access point, when MIMO and DLP are implemented together, you can essentially chain wireless stations by using them as repeaters.

Re:n[bg]

[uss_valiant]

Not sure if 802.11n uses V-BLAST or some other space-time code, but the nature of V-BLAST, a MIMO scheme, is that the more signal scattering/mutlipaths you have, the better. Signal power is usually splitted on all antennas, the total power isn't more than when using a single antenna. Using the multipath environment with different signal transmitting times you can transmit mutliple signals in the same time frame on the same frequency!

From the Bell Labs Homepage:

The central paradigm behind BLAST is the exploitation, rather than the mitigation, of multipath effects in order to achieve very high spectral efficiencies (bits/sec/Hz), significantly higher than are possible when multipath is viewed as an adversary rather than an ally.

BLAST: Bell Labs Layered Space-Time [bell-labs.com]
BLAST High-Level Overview [bell-labs.com]