While it may not be an official standard; and is drawing ire from standards bodies such as the International Telecommunications Union-Radio communications sector – which wrote the 4G Standard – as well as many independent technology reviewers, Broadcom is insistent on establishing “5G” as the official term for the new 802.11ac WiFi standard, which uses higher frequencies for better penetration through walls.
Having been the first to release WiFi Chips capable of using the new standard, Broadcom is now making waves again by announcing the imminent release of all new chips which they hope will make connectivity more reliable than ever. The company announced today at CES 2014 two new WiFi client system-on-a-chips (SoCs), models BCM43569 and BCM43602, designed to offer Wi-Fi speed and range while reducing the Wi-Fi processing power of the host device.
In general, the typical household using WiFi is sharing it across numerous devices. Just in one room for example, you may have a WiFi-enabled Game Console connected to your TV, with Bluetooth controllers for wirelessly connecting to the console to game; and perhaps also to control the TV itself. You may even have Bluetooth speakers. The problem with this is, when multiple devices use the same wireless technology and they’re closely bunched together, they create interference, which reduces the available WiFi bandwidth and can slow down the connections as well as hurt the signal strength for devices further away. Broadcom says the new BCM43569 and BCM43602 are designed to tackle this problem.
With the BCM43569 chip, Broadcom’s solution is to allow smart TVs to receive both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (4.1) signals simultaneously, allowing the TV to change its wireless output to whatever would give it the best performance. With a USB 3.0 Interface on board – though USB 2.0 adaptors will also be supported – the company claims it’s the first chip to include a common USB port for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and integrated Power Amplifiers (iPA) across both bands. It’s designed to deliver up to three times the bandwidth of its peers, and it comes with a separate Bluetooth low-noise amplifier (LNA) as well as customized Wi-Fi and Bluetooth coexistence algorithms.
Meanwhile, the BCM43602 is designed for the PCIe interface; and is capable of receiving 802.11ac speeds up to 900Mbps. Here, the performance gains come from allowing the host device – for example, a computer – to utilise more of its CPU Power itself without wasting so much on the WiFi connection. This is because, says Broadcom, the chip has the entire WLAN software driver running on itself; so the chip does the hard work instead.
Samples of both chips have already made their way to OEMs, ready to incorporate into their own products. That means we should expect to see the final products that will be first to use Broadcom’s new and improved “5G WiFi” standard by the end of the year.
