How to locate Wi-Fi products

In the wireless LAN field, it is a great challenge to cultivate many functions that can maintain the product at the strategic level. In addition to the short transitional period of technology transfer, like the 802.11g products listed six years ago, Wi-Fi, like all product-based products, will eventually be positioned at a "good" price level.

In the market, there have been some companies that have raised the price of Wi-Fi products, such as providing higher data transmission rates through nonstandard models or increasing the wireless reception range at a lower rate, enables users to use two products of the same manufacturer's chipset in pairs. However, this dedicated feature does not effectively make Wi-Fi products too expensive. Therefore, hardware vendors chose to differentiate their products through encapsulation, which of course makes these vendors very troublesome (like Apple ).

By defining the 802.11n standard, IEEE can effectively solve the problem-better-best positioning. Unlike the previous WLAN standard, the 802.11n draft provides an optional mode to control the required features, so that vendors can provide different hardware configurations to achieve different levels of performance requirements.

One of the simplest applications is to double the channel bandwidth to 40 MHz, which can effectively double the data rate. Although a channel with twice the bandwidth requires more power and a more expensive system design, there is no additional device-related cost. As a result, supporting 40 MHz channels may become a basic function without additional charges.

Another available method is to increase the number of data streams, which is a key method to identify 802.11n hardware, because the implementation of multi-path requires multiple RF circuits and multiple antennas. The 802.11n draft allows up to four parallel data streams. In addition, the 40 MHz channel bandwidth can increase the data rate from 65Mbps-only a little better than the maximum rate of 54Mbps provided by the 802.11g-to 600 Mbps.

Everything continues to be good on the market-better differentiation level. However, things have not been carried out as expected.

The problem now is that a unified engineering standard has spread to hardware vendors, and each vendor pushes its devices to the market based on their different understandings of the 802.11n draft. So far, none of the products listed based on the draft 802.11n have marked the performance-selective frequency band.

Currently, most 802.11n products are clients and access points with two data streams and 40 MHz bandwidth. the maximum data rate of these products is 300 Mbps. However, a high-end wireless router is on the market. This product can process up to three data streams. The single-stream chipset is mainly used for printers, netbooks, and wireless handheld devices.

Currently, three types of Wi-Fi products are under development. The corresponding data rates are 150 Mbps, 450 Mbps, and Mbps. However, these three products are called the 802.11n draft hardware without distinction. This is actually a waste.

A simple solution is to differentiate (such as n-150Mbps) by the maximum data rate of the product ). However, there are other methods. At present, the important thing is not how the industry solves this problem, but what must be solved now.

Wi-Fi Alliance is a logical focus. This 10-year-old non-profit organization has been committed to advocating the industry to jointly develop market plans.

The Alliance's Working Group is investigating vendor interest in the above draft-n. Currently, single-stream and three-stream products are listed, and the pressure on the working group is to quickly release a solution, because if this solution is not available, three products with different performance levels will be positioned as "good" in one place. We know that "good" is not enough.

1. Quick introduction to wireless network technology-Wi-Fi
2. Misunderstandings about compatibility between Wi-Fi and wireless products