*** WiFi Planet Fall 2003
By John Latta
December 3-5
San Jose, California
WiFi Planet Conference and Expo Fall 2003 returned to the West
coast this December. Sponsored by IBM, Intel, Hewlett Packard,
Computer Associates, AirDefense, Proxim, Rocksteady Networks,
WilTel Communications and more, these are the only events where
all the major manufacturers, sellers and buyers of Wi-Fi related
technology assemble together. Now some highlights.
Cisco
Steve Nye, GM, Building Broadband Solutions Unit, Cisco, showed
market research from NOP World Technology, based on actual WLAN
use by type of user. The response was very vertical market
biased. For example, Senior Management has 42% penetration and
Logistics 19%. Nursing staff and students are at 19%. But at the
bottom were Manufacturing and Finance, 1%, and shipping 2%.Other
Interesting points included:
WLANs enable the Virtual Enterprise Network which spans
enterprise use, guest access in the corporation, use in the home
and public access.
Mobil applications and devices will take many form factors. Shown
were PDAs, Table PCs, scanners and 802.11 phones.
It is claimed that WLANs have shown that the average user connect
time is >3.5 hours per day and the average time savings from that
us is 90 minutes. According to calculations by NOP World
Technology this implies a savings of $14,000 per year and is
directly related to productivity improvement.
Intel
Les Vadasz, Board Member, Intel, said that 85% of all the use
issues are the same:
Initial install and configuration too difficult
Can’t get connected and
Don’t understand how to use it.
Other points made during his talk include:
WiFi can distribute the Internet all over the world at the lowest
possible cost.
In broadband always on is a big deal. Think if it took you 2
minutes to open a refrigerator? Anything less that instant
response has become unacceptable to consumers.
Wireless broadband is one step beyond the always on paradigm. It
extends always on to anywhere.
WiFi is just too hard to use. “Grandma does not do SSID.”
The computer is the network – “Our friends at Sun got it
backwards.”
Standards are important when there are network effects. That is,
when the value of one technology increases significantly when it
is related and tied to another. Standards are the reason that
802.11 has been so successful.
SyChip
SyChip showed an impressive implementation of 802.11b. It was a
complete radio in an SD Card form factor. This was plugged into a
cell phone.
In his presentation, Navi Miglani, SyChip, laid down some of the
limitations of 802.11:
High system cost
High Current Requirements
RX – 300ma
TX – 300 – 400ma
Battery Life - <3 hours of continuous use
Long set up time
Over 25% of the CF cards with 802.11 are returned for this reason
High component count, >100
As the technology is refined Navi provided a list of applications
it could extend into:
Digital Cameras – already seen
Personal Entertainment Systems
Home Appliances
Gaming
Industrial control
IceFyre Semiconductor
Al Petrick, Vice-Chair IEEE 802.11 and VP for Business
Development of IceFyre Semiconductor made interesting comments
about 802.11 and the market. These include:
The PC centric market will go from 16m devices in 2003 to 50m
devices in 2006.
The CE market will go from 4.5m devices in 2003 to 95m devices in
2006. The requirements for CE application include:
<1w peak power
<200mW average power
20 – 30Mb/s thruput
Whole home coverage at 54Mb/s
150ms multipath tolerance
Some of the next generation WLAN embedded products being
developed include:
HDTVs
Converged phones
PDA
All of these have stringent power requirements. From this Al
surmised that this provides a large opportunity for
differentiated silicon.
During the same presentation he provided an overview of the
status of 802.11 standards which included:
802.11e – Ratification expected in Q2 2004
802.11i – Ratification expected in Q2 2004
802.11n – Ratification 2006
802.11k – Network management – important improvements in this
area are coming from standards development in UWB, 802.15.3
Proxim
Kevin Duffy, SVP of Product Development and R&D, Proxim gave his
presentation with the keynote that Voice and Cellular integration
with WLAN will drive the future market growth. It was his premise
that professionals will move to
1 phone number
1 voice mail
Fast wireless
2 devices – phone and computational device
An interesting statistic:
More than 50% of the business cell phone calls are indoors within
the business.
One factor cited which would benefit the operators was:
If many of the users are on fixed rate plans, taking them off the
wireless network, and placing the indirectly on the wired
infrastructure, via VoWLAN is a gain for the cell phone operator,
especially in heavily loaded cell phone environments.
A cause for pause was Kevin’s citation of two prior attempts to
develop a market for wireless phones in the enterprise: The first
was based on CT2, CT2Plus, CT3 and DECT in the early 90s, then in
the late 90s the microcellular approach, both of which failed
miserably in spite of technology which worked.
Motia
Motia was promoting the ability of its smart antenna to improve
range of 802.11 by 2X to 3X. The booth demonstration had a 4
antenna configuration linked to its signal processing chip. At
802.11 in Boston and stated that silicon would be available in Q1
2004 and products are expected to ship Q2 2004. The effectiveness
of this approach is based on the chip they have developed and the
software which runs on it. This MIMO approach uses adaptive beam
forming where the weighted combination of the four antennas is
used to determine the sender direction and uses the same weights
to transmit back. Because the process gets repeated for every
packet the system allows for tracking of a moving user. Deals
have been cut with AP manufactures but these are not being
disclosed at this time.
www.motia.com/
WiFi Plus
The company claimed that its multi-polarization approach, 3-D
polarization, improves performance in noise reduction and
obstruction penetration. The antennas are described as Multi-
Polarized, Multi-Plane, Multi-Path and Multi-Purpose. The thrust
of the approach is to use normally discarded signals, due to
depolarization from scattering, to increase the effective signal
strength. There are a number of antenna designs which are being
sold on their web site.
www.wifi-plus.com/
Bandspeed
Bandspeed uses a sectored antenna with software to increase
range, rate and coverage. The implementation also combines a
switch and antenna into an AP. The product is called Gypsy which
uses spatial division multiple access (SDMA).
Bandspeed's technology uses antenna gain, which allows transmit
power and receive sensitivity to be focused to increase the range
of a Wi-Fi network. This will enable switch access points to
achieve up to 3km line-of-sight (LOS) outdoors and up to 3 times
the distance one would achieve with conventional indoor access
points.
The first product is the 940K Series Gypsy Wireless Access Point
Switch which supports antenna sector switching in IEEE 802.11a,
b, and g wireless LAN access points (APs). Six antenna sectors
are supported and the software allows for multiple different
configurations.
www.bandspeed.com/
zeeWAVES
zeeWAVES product is the BrightStar antenna which can focus the
beam into an area. These have a high front-to-back ratio, and
with flexible aperture, so that additional network security is
provided. The antenna coverage can be varied from 10 to 360
degrees. The company is also developing a network and users
mutual authentication system.
www.zeewaves.com/
SmartPackets
The premise of the company is that by dynamically changing the
packet size it is possible to significantly improve the point to
point link thruput. Underlying the packet size adjustment is a
neural net engine that tracks the performance of packets.
SmartPackets claims that in live tests their technology shows 2X
the thruput. This technology currently is implemented in software
and runs on Windows. The technology optimizes the packet size
between the IP and Logical Link Control layers. The three
components include:
Network Analyzer which monitors and measures the network status
Packet resizer which fragments the outgoing packets to the
optimum packet size and
Neural network which recommends the optimum packet size for a
given network condition
www.smartpacketsinc.com/
Extricom
Extricom's technology enables all access points (AP) in a network
to be aware of every client at all times. It does:
Continuous optimization of the RF spectrum
Uses channels to achieve capacity, not achieve coverage;
Uses uplink diversity;
Used downlink AP contention avoidance;
Makes Optimal frequency reuse and
Accomplishes centralized decision making.
www.extricom.com/
Cognio
Cognio uses what they call Intelligent Spectrum Management (ISM)
which is a distributed system of both hardware and software. ISM
discovers, identifies, and locates sources of all unlicensed band
transmissions, including sources of network interference to the
level of the type of the source and its location. This
information is used at both the link level and the network level.
Cognio claims that the result is:
Enhanced network security
Rogue or interfering network elements can be detected, located
and rejected.
Improved manageability
Processed RF data is made visible along with expert-system based
suggestions for improving performance and resolving network
problems. The intent is that software can automatically mitigate
network problems, based on user-configurable rules and
parameters.
Improved utilization of the network spectrum
More clients can share the network without interfering with each
other.
Increased coverage
Clients can physically move further from the fixed network APs
while still maintaining the same high data rates.
Increased link reliability
The network responds adaptively to interference, greatly reducing
the chance that links will lose connectivity due to interference.
www.cognio.com/
Propagate Networks
Propagate Networks was in small stand in the Atheros booth,
always seem packed. The center of attention was AutoCell software
that goes into both the AP and client. It actively manages the
wireless network. The characteristics include:
AutoCell is a distributed control system.
It turns 802.11 into a completely self-organizing network. The
claim is made that site-surveys, channel maps, and RF planning is
no longer required.
Optimal network-wide channel selection
AutoCell-enabled APs and clients automatically select channels
regardless of when or where APs or clients are added to the
network - globally optimizing all channel utilization throughout
the network.
Automatic micro-cells
By adjusting transmit power on the fly, AutoCell-enabled APs and
clients continuously size their RF footprints to fit the demands
of the RF environment - micro-cells for tightly packed - larger
cells for maximum coverage. This minimizes co-channel
interference while maximizing overall network capacity.
Automatic load-balancing
AutoCell automatically balances load across a network of APs.
Under-utilized APs are put to work - over-burdened APs are off-
loaded.
Unassisted fault-tolerance
Without user-intervention, AutoCell expands to fill in for
network outages but also shrinks coverage to avoid interference
when the repair is complete.
Full-rate, fast roaming
Instead of waiting to roam until data rates fall, AutoCell allows
clients to maintain maximum data rate when moving cell to cell.
If cells are close enough, users can maintain a continuous 54
Mbps data rate.
Standards compliance
AutoCell works with off-the-shelf, 802.11-standards based chips
and system products.
Integration with mixed environments
Any mix of AutoCell-equipped APs and clients and non-AutoCell
equipment interoperate. As more AutoCell APs and clients are
added, the network becomes increasingly self-optimizing and
easier to manage.
AutoCell requires no user or management interaction. APs and
clients can be added to the network anywhere, at any density,
with no site planning or installation rules required.
No wonder the booth was busy.
www.propagatenetworks.com/
Wave Comments
Here at WiFi Planet both the excitement of the developing market
and its immaturity surfaced simultaneously. During the conference
we explored smart antennas, TPC layer control and RF management.
It became very clear that there are many areas under development
that could significantly improve performance in terms of reach,
coverage and thruput. Yet, at present, all are outside of the
802.11 specification and it appears doubtful that these
innovations will achieve market scale without standards support.
Wave Issue 0347 01/23/04 Article 2-01