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Industry confidence in the emerging 802.11n standard, which provides increased range and data rates compared to the 802.11g standard, is reflected in recent rollouts from two Wi-Fi firms. This confidence is primarily due to the anticipated ratification of 802.11n, as well as the commencement of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s 802.11n draft 2.0 certification program.

Providing OEMs with fundamental 802.11n building blocks, Atheros has launched its second-generation XSPAN products, the AR9001 family, which like its first-generation products, is compliant with the latest IEEE draft 2.0 802.11n specification. One such OEM, Xirrus, uses an Atheros 802.11n solution (though neither the specific XSPAN product generation nor the component architecture were disclosed) for its recently released 802.11a/b/g/n radio module upgrade for its Wi-Fi array.

According to Harpreet Chohan, senior product manager at Atheros, the latest products from the company support the first wave of the enterprise solutions from the industry, as well as the second wave of consumer end products. The four enterprise AP/router solutions include the AR9001AP-3NX: 802.11n dual-band configurable with 3 x 3 MIMO and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

Figure 1: The USB client solutions from Atheros enable 802.11n wireless access through a USB interface.

Within its second wave of consumer 802.11n solutions, Atheros launched three USB client designs, including the AR9001U-2NX: 11n dual-band with 2 x 2 MIMO (the world’s first dual-band USB product, according to Chohan). Figure 1 shows a typical application.