My friends in Palo Alto have topped themselves with a new chippie:
Airgo Networks today announced its third generation True MIMO chipset with support for data rates up to 240 Mbps. The company said its technology makes wire-free offices a reality…
“When MIMO was first unveiled, it reversed over 100 years of scientific thinking by harnessing natural radio wave distortions, which were previously perceived as interference, to deliver dramatically increased speed, range and reliability,” said Greg Raleigh, President and CEO of Airgo Networks. “With True MIMO Gen3 technology, our team has achieved a scientific milestone by proving that wireless can surpass wired speeds.”
WiFi+MIMO may be literally like a rocket ship, but not really faster than all wired networks, or even as fast as the UWB wireless network, but Greg can dream.
Ummm… but wireless always surpasses wired speeds…as long as you’re talking about propagation of electromagnetic waves.
It falls right out of Maxwell’s equations.
Of course, noise and propagation losses are other items entirely…
UWB, of course, doesn’t have the range of WLAN, which in turn doesn’t have the range of other wireless technologies.
But the “reversed 100 years of scientific thinking” is utter nonsense. Everybody knew space was another dimension as well as time and bandwidth years ago; MIMO’s essence is in effect intentionally using the spatial dimension.
I’m sure there are people in Airgo cringing at that release.
I don’t think we’re talking about wave propagation as much as bandwidth, but what about optical?
Optical at best has between 50% and 75% of the propagation speed of air, which is close to free space.
But, but, but … optical moves through air, just like electro-magnetic.
Are you saying photon torpedoes are less speedy than deadly magnetic rays?
“UWB, of course, doesn’t have the range of WLAN”
Actually UWB has a far greater range than WLAN – although the current proposals call for short range standards (I understand as a concession to HAM operators and government concerns).