Airgo Launches the Next Generation in WLAN

[RommelS]

High-Throughput MIMO Chipset Now Sampling

PALO ALTO, CA, August 18, 2003 - Airgo Networks, a developer of innovative wireless technology and products, today announced that its AGN100 Wi-Fi chipset is available for sampling. Airgo’s chipset establishes a new frontier for wireless performance and launches the next generation of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Using Airgo’s unique multiple antenna system, the AGN100 extends existing Wi-Fi rates to 108 Mbps per channel while remaining compatible with all common Wi-Fi standards. In head-to-head testing, the AGN100 demonstrated range that was two to six times that of competing WLAN chipsets, resulting in an order-of-magnitude increase in the area covered by each access point.

The superior performance of Airgo’s technology reduces the cost and complexity of WLAN business infrastructure, enables new applications like high-definition video distribution and overcomes many of the existing hurdles to a positive user experience.

“The Airgo team has removed all the fundamental technical barriers to WLAN adoption such as spotty coverage, limited range, insufficient speeds, inadequate security, and a confusing array of standards,” said Greg Raleigh, chief executive officer of Airgo. “By resolving all of these difficult problems in a single highly advanced cost effective solution for OEMs, Wi-Fi can finally fulfill the wireless promise of seamless, cost effective and secure home multimedia networks, enterprise data networks and Wi-Fi hotspots.”

With Airgo’s chipset, consumer electronics manufacturers can now realize their vision of enabling the multimedia wireless home with simultaneous transmission of high definition video, DVD-quality music, interactive gaming and data networking. Equally, wireless LAN equipment manufacturers wanting to offer standards-compliant products able to cover a typical office environment with only one access point or provision an entire campus with minimum equipment and deployment costs now have the technology they need.

“Wireless equipment manufacturers who have examined our technology realize that Airgo’s high throughput Wi-Fi performance will be a compelling, differentiating feature in laptop PCs, HDTVs, PDAs and enterprise network products,” added Raleigh.

Airgo’s chipset greatly increases the throughput, range, and reliability of Wi-Fi devices by utilizing Airgo’s breakthrough multi-antenna transmission and reception technology. The chipset is the world’s first mass-market product to incorporate Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology: the most sophisticated and highest performance class of smart antenna signal processing. The AGN100 achieves the promise of the pioneering multi-antenna signal processing research that Airgo founders began at Stanford University in 1995.

“Airgo's MIMO implementation brings a new class of performance to wireless LANs," said Craig J. Mathias, a principal with Ashland, MA-based, wireless advisory firm Farpoint Group. "MIMO is likely the only viable path to significantly improved range and throughput in WLAN systems, both today and in the future.”

Breakthrough wireless performance forms the starting point for the advantages of Airgo’s WLAN chipset. Airgo has also re-thought the entire network solution, designing features into the chipset to support robust security, quality of service for video and music or voice over IP, roaming, and other networking features that aid in the deployment and operation of Wi-Fi networks. The chipset also supports the same extremely strong standards-based network security technology used in the most demanding enterprise Ethernet networks, ending the need for proprietary wireless LAN security patches.

AGN100 High Throughput Chipset – Available Now
The AGN100 is a highly integrated two-chip set that includes a Baseband/MAC chip (AGN100BB) and an RF chip (AGN100RF). The chipset is built with a scalable architecture that allows manufacturers to implement single antenna systems using just one RF chip or increase performance by adding additional RF chips.

The chipset supports all 802.11 a, b, and g modes and also extends rates to 108 Mbps. It incorporates the latest innovations from the IEEE 802.11 working group including (draft) TGi security and TGe quality of service features. Airgo has worked with its manufacturing partners to create ready-to-produce designs for Access Points as well as Cardbus, MiniPCI, and PCI clients. Sample products utilizing the AGN100 wireless chipset are now available from Airgo’s manufacturing partners to qualified network equipment manufacturers and other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Airgo is also developing software for complete wireless network solutions that takes advantage of the features that are built into the hardware products.