CES: Broadcom shows gigabit/sec wireless ICs

Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(01/09/12, 8:15 AM GMT)

Las Vegas, Nev. – At the CES here Broadcom Corp. launched the first of its Gigabit/sec 5G Wi-Fi 802.11ac chips designed to support the growing demand for video on mobile devices.

The new Wi-Fi standard is designed to provide faster, more reliable coverage, allowing for HD-quality streaming, faster web content loading and less battery life drain.

The company said its new chips are three times faster and up to six times more power efficient than equivalent 802.11n offerings, boasting an 80 MHz channel bandwidth that is twice as wide as that of the current generation of Wi-Fi.

The chips include the BCM4360, BCM4352, BCM43526 and BCM43516, and also sport 256-QAM, a higher modulation scheme which purportedly increases data transfer efficiency. They are designed to more easily do beam forming which helps steer content in the direction of the intended receiver, extending the range.

The new BCM4360 supports the PCIe interface -- designed for access points, routers, DSL/cable gateways and PC products -- and implements 3-stream 802.11ac specifications, reaching speeds of up to 1.3 Gbps.

The BCM4352 and BCM43526 implement 2-stream 802.11ac specification to reach up to 867 Mbps. BCM4352 supports PCIe interface and the BCM43526 supports the USB interface.

The BCM43516 supports USB –mainly for consumer electronics devices like televisions, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players-- and reaches speeds of up to 433 Mbps with a single stream 802.11ac implementation.

By making it possible to transfer the same amount of data at a much faster rate, the chips allow devices to go into a low-power mode faster than existing 802.11n products.

The industry has already rallied behind the standard, which works with all legacy 802.11 standards and can work alongside other wireless technologies like Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth and NFC.

To learn more, go to www.broadcom.com.

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