Airgo chipset promises WiFi at 240Mbps

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 15 September 2005 17:46

Business IT - Technology

US wireless technology company, Airgo Networks, has announced its third generation of WiFi chipsets claiming "true MIMO [multiple input output] with support for data rates up to 240Mbps." Airgo says that samples are now being provided to partners and it expect retail availability by late Q4, 2005. The chipset is claimed to be 100 percent compatible with 802.11b, 11g and 11a Wi-Fi, the latter, the fastest of the three, operates at a maximum speed of only 54Mbps. However, Airgo provided no information on the range over which the 240Mbps performance would be available

Airgo's first and second generation MIMO technology is currently shipping in a wide range of products from companies including Belkin, Buffalo, Linksys, Netgear, Planex, Samsung, Smartvue and SOHOware. The third generation technology is expected to ship in routers, laptops and other devices by late Q4 2005.

Airgo claims that "real-world tests show that Airgo's third generation 'True MIMO' provides actual TCP/IP throughput of over 120Mbps with uncompressed traffic, surpassing the performance of wired 100BaseT Ethernet." In addition, it claims that the chipset "features a single chip with two complete radios fully integrated to achieve further aggressive board-level integration, which has resulted in a 15 percent reduction in the overall bill of material cost and a 20 percent reduction in power consumption."

The company is reported saying that its new chips will cost around $US80 compared to $US100 for current WiFi chips and will help it to increase its share of the $US1 billion US market for wireless lan chips from five percent this year to 30 percent next year. Airgo is a privately held company founded in 2001.