Hybrid WiGig-Wi-Fi Chip Planned by Atheros, Wilocity

Atheros and Wilocity, which signify the Wi-Fi and 60-GHz wireless HDMI camps, have granted to work mutually to widen hybrid "tri-band" chipsets.

The two companies could increase their first product samples by early 2011, and transport them later that year, said Tal Tamir, chief executive of Wilocity, in an interview.

To date, Wi-Fi and the wireless multimedia technologies such as WirelessHD, WiGig, and others have been in quasi-competition with one another, as both strive to be the home's key wireless network technology. The battleground has been the living room, with the ultimate exclusion of the HDMI cable that currently serves as the transport mechanism for encrypted multimedia data.

Although the WiGig technology claims to have ranges beyond ten meters, the technology still can't rather match the coverage of 802.11n, roughly 70 meters (230 feet) indoors. Likewise, even the 150-Mbit/s maximum throughput 802.11n allows can't compete with the 7-Gbits/s throughput the WiGig measurement defines.

Atheros Aims Designed For Wi-Fi/Power Line Standard

Combining wireless technologies like Wi-Fi with powerline systems has been discussed for years, but a real constraint is rising in growth areas like the smart grid, home monitoring and full-house digital media networks. Having acquired a powerline chip specialist, Intellon, last year, Wi-Fi bigwig Atheros is looking to incorporate its technologies more closely and, in the process, try to create a de facto standard.

On acquiring Intellon last September, Atheros CEO Craig Barratt said the Wi-Fi/powerline combination, plus Ethernet, could take the role of the backbone of the home network. However, powerline has its own standards issues, with six different candidates, while other wireless platforms like ZigBee and Bluetooth are also looking to drive into the smart home. Atheros hopes its proposal will gather sufficient industry weight to help sort out the standards mess, and is focusing on a mesh networking approach.

A mesh acceptance Wi-Fi and powerline and also the MoCA (Multimedia over Coax) home networking stage would considerably enhance the conception of standardized in-home systems, says Atheros' CTO Bill McFarland. Speaking at the recent Embedded Systems Conference, he said. We are interested in consistency, but we will do it in a focused way. We are only talking about home networking. In the past, various attempts to create mesh standards have floundered because their remit was too broad, covering greatly different mesh applications from metro area networks to military to home.