Atheros Fourth-Generation WLAN Chipsets Double the Range of Wi-Fi and Reduce Power Consumption by 60 Percent

New Family Features Breakthrough eXtended Range Technology and Industry's First Wake-on-Wireless and Wake-on-Theft Capabilities

SUNNYVALE, Calif., September 15, 2003—Atheros Communications, a leading developer of advanced multimode wireless LAN chipsets, today announced two new chipsets featuring breakthrough technologies to extend the range and reduce the power consumption of 802.11 wireless networks. When they are incorporated into WLAN devices, the chipsets will offer end users extended range, longer battery life, and network management tools that help reduce the cost of operating and owning wireless networks.

The Atheros chipsets use the company’s eXtended Range (XR) technology to give Wi-Fi products twice the range of existing designs, and they have power-saving design improvements that reduce 802.11a/g power consumption by 60 percent over 802.11b solutions. The chipsets are the first in the industry to provide important integrated wireless network management capabilities, including Wake-on-Wireless™ and Wake-on-Theft™. These features enable users to remotely manage their wireless devices and raise an alert if they are stolen.

“We’ve incorporated important technical advances into our fourth-generation silicon to improve and drive the adoption of the next wave of wireless designs,” said Craig Barratt, president and chief executive officer of Atheros. “Our new chipsets raise the bar on throughput, range, manageability and power consumption for the next generation of wireless LAN products.”

Traditional Wi-Fi chipset architectures focus on maximizing throughput in order to perform well in benchmarks and typical office environments. Such designs typically don’t perform well at long range or in difficult environments, such as multi-story homes. Atheros’ new chipsets feature a signal processing architecture that dramatically stretches the performance of a WLAN by embedding separate optimized designs for high performance, high signal-to-noise and long range, low signal-to-noise ratio environments. The architecture delivers receive sensitivities of up to –105dBm, over 20 dB better than the 802.11 specification.

New Power Management Approach Improves Power Consumption by 60 Percent Over 802.11b

Conventional wisdom holds that 802.11b chipsets consume less power than 802.11g or 802.11a chipsets. Atheros’ latest products debunk that myth. The chipsets enable a multi-phase approach to signal processing that dramatically extends the battery life of mobile devices. The new design controls the power of different sections of the wireless device according to the level of system and network activity. This reduces the power consumption of the new Atheros chipsets when receiving 802.11a/g by more than 30 percent compared to the 802.11b device used in Intel™ Centrino™ systems; power consumption is more than 20 percent lower during transmit. The effect on battery life is even greater because these measurements compare an 802.11a/g device operating at a 54Mbps data rate with an 802.11b device operating at 11Mbps.

Especially significant is the performance of the new chipsets in idle mode, which accounts for most of the operating time of wireless LAN products. In idle mode, the power consumption of devices based on the new Atheros 802.11b/g and 802.11a/b/g chipsets is about 95 percent lower than that of the 802.11b wireless devices used in Centrino systems. 

Many companies rely on network management systems that remotely control and administer desktop computers. Power consumption and design limitations have traditionally prevented these systems from being used with wireless devices. Atheros’ Wake-on-Wireless capability brings network management to the Wi-Fi environment.

Enterprise management tools can administer wireless systems equipped with the new Atheros chipsets and take advantage of their remote wakeup and alert features just as if the wireless devices were on a wired network. The Wake-on-Wireless capability is compatible with existing network infrastructure equipment, management software, and industry standards for remote wakeup functionality.

Atheros is also introducing a new Wake-on-Theft capability. This function can alert network administrators if a mobile device such as a laptop or PDA equipped with the new Atheros chipsets is removed from a company’s facilities without authorization. The Wake-on-Theft function can also wake-up and raise an alarm on the mobile device, even if the device is powered off.

Atheros’ fourth-generation AR5004 chipset family includes dual-band 802.11a/b/g and single-band 802.11b/g designs. The chipsets are available now in volume.

• AR5004X—The dual-band 802.11a/b/g chipset provides universal wireless connectivity to any 802.11 network, anywhere in the world. The ability to support all the major wireless networking standards future-proofs WLAN deployments and delivers the highest performance.
• AR5004G—The single-band 802.11b/g chipset provides 802.11g functionality and performance for the home and small office users offering a flexible upgrade path for legacy 802.11b networks.

The AR5004G supports 802.11b and 802.11g in the 2-GHz band from 2.300 to 2.500 GHz.  The AR5004X adds support for 802.11a in the 5-GHz band from 4.900 to 5.850 GHz, thus enabling tri-mode or universal WLAN products. The AR5004X meets international requirements for WLAN operation based on the draft 802.11h and 802.11j standards. The only products to have CE marking for 5.470 GHz European operation and TELEC certification for 4.900/5.030 GHz Japan operation are based on Atheros chipsets. Both chipsets include support for emerging security standards such as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and draft 802.11i Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with no performance reduction, and draft 802.11e Quality of Service enhancements. A single driver and firmware code base supports all Atheros chipsets, and provides both backward and forward compatibility with Atheros’ previous and next-generation multi-standard designs.

New Chipsets Also Support Super G and Super A/G

About Atheros Communications Inc.

Atheros Communications is a leading developer of networking technologies for secure, high-performance wireless local area networks. As an innovator in advanced multi-mode wireless solutions compliant with the IEEE 802.11 specifications, Atheros is driving transparent connections among electronic devices in the office, home and on the road. Atheros technology is being used by many of the world's leading wireless equipment manufacturers including 3Com, Acer, Acrowave Systems, Actiontec, AIRAYA, Airespace, AirVast Technology, ALPS, Alvarion, Ambit, Arcadyan, Aruba Wireless Networks, Askey, ASUS, Avaya, BenQ, Chantry Networks, Contec, CyberTAN, Dacom, Delta Networks, D-Link, Elecom, Fujitsu, Gemtek, Gigabyte Technology, Global Sun Tech, HP, IBM, Icom, Intel, Intermec, I-O Data, IPone, Lenovo, Linksys, NEC, NETGEAR, Nortel Networks, Philips, Proxim, Samsung, Senao, Sercom, SMC Networks, Sony, Symbol Technologies, TDK, TECOM, Toshiba, Trapeze Networks, USI, W2 Networks, Wistron NeWeb, Z-Com and others. For more information, visit www.atheros.com or send email to info@atheros.com.

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Atheros, the Atheros logo, Super G, Super AG®, Wake-on-Wireless and Wake-on-Theft are trademarks of Atheros Communications, Inc.  All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

For press and analyst inquiries contact: Cheryl Patstone, 408-773-5344, cheryl@atheros.com or Greg Wood, A&R Partners, 650-762-2838, gwood@arpartners.com.