Philips heeft op de Internationale Funkausstellung (zal wel ergens in het land der Duitsers zijn...) een demonstratie gegeben van z'n wireless home-networking technologie, dat het samen met het Canadese Wi-LAN heeft ontwikkeld. Het hele zaakje is gebaseerd op de IEEE1394 standaard voor draadloze communicatie en haalt snelheden van 24Mbit/sec op de 2,4Ghz band:
Wi-LAN's technology contribution to the partnership helped achieve the data rates necessary for in-home multimedia networking. Philips Semiconductors, meanwhile, "brought to the table our 1394 technology and set-top expertise," said Benno Ritter, product-marketing manager for wireless connectivity products at Philips Semiconductors (Sunnyvale, Calif.). Philips engineers modified the Ethernet interface of the Wi-LAN-developed W-OFDM device to yield a 1394 interface. Because it employs the 1394 packet size and time stamp, the proposed wireless scheme can seamlessly maintain 1394-based connectivity by wired or wireless means, Ritter said. The demonstration system shown here features an MPEG-2 data stream generator that feeds a multiple transport stream into a Philips set-top box. The set-top converts the signal to an IEEE 1394 data stream and applies it to the Wi-LAN W-OFDM radio system. The Wi-LAN transmitter then sends the data stream over the air to the corresponding W-OFDM receiver.[...] Though the raw data rate of the Philips and Wi-LAN scheme is 46-Mbit/s , the net rate is 24 Mbits/s, after subtracting out the bit rates necessary for the W-OFDM headers and error correction (16 Mbits/s) and for the 1394 headers and error correction (6 Mbits). "We have not measured the actual distances that wireless 1394 can cover," said Ritter, "but considering the nature of W-OFDM originally developed for outdoor wireless applications covering up to 5 miles, we don't see any problems in covering a multiroom environment."
Meer info vind je in dit artikel van EETimes.
