[Qualcomm announces the AGN400 chipset offering full support for Draft 2.0 of the IEEE 802.11n standard. This is the fourth generation 802.11n-compliant chipset from Airgo Networks. Qualcomm also announced its acquisition of Airgo Networks today.]

San Diego -- QUALCOMM Incorporated announced the availability of the world's first chipset offering full support for Draft 2.0 of the IEEE 802.11n standard. The AGN400 chipset is the fourth generation 802.11n-compliant chipset from Airgo Networks Inc. - whose acquisition by QUALCOMM was also announced today - and features Airgo's True MIMO Gen-N technology. True MIMO Gen-N capitalizes on Airgo's patented innovations in multiple antenna technology to extend the effective range and bolster data throughput for consumer Wi-Fi and next-generation wireless digital home entertainment devices.

"The technologies that Airgo will bring to QUALCOMM, including the AGN400, will help us continue to deliver high-performance wireless broadband with all types of products supporting a wide range of applications," said Dr. Sanjay K. Jha, president of QUALCOMM CDMA Technologies. "We look forward to a future where ubiquitous connectivity drives innovation to transform the user experience and spawn entirely new categories of services and devices."

"The industry-leading performance of AGN400, and its full compatibility with the 11n interoperability specification selected by the Wi-Fi Alliance, is exactly what our customers have asked us to deliver," said Greg Raleigh, president and CEO of Airgo Networks. "Now that QUALCOMM is acquiring Airgo, PC notebook customers can count on a single supply source for wireless chipsets that deliver industry-leading Wi-Fi connectivity when a Wi-Fi network is available, and seamless connectivity everywhere else using 3G CDMA cellular broadband access technology."

Drawing on its full compatibility with Draft 2.0 of the IEEE 802.11n standard, and backward compatibility to 802.11 a/b/g and Draft 1.0 of 802.11n, the AGN400 enables development of PC OEM products that connect with all devices supporting any form of the 802.11 standards. Draft 2.0 improves upon the earlier Draft 1.0 with significantly better performance, a greater feature set and enhanced interoperability. The AGN400 chipset also supports a full array of interface buses for OEM products in the retail, PC OEM, enterprise, consumer electronics and service provider market segments. Additionally, "neighbor friendly" coexistence is supported when the AGN400 is transmitting 40 MHz-mode 802.11n traffic and there are active 802.11a/b/g/n networks nearby.

The AGN400 chipset, reference designs and software are currently sampling with lead customers and will be publicly demonstrated in January 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. Products containing True MIMO Gen-N technology are expected to be commercially available in the first quarter of 2007.

More...

Back to Headlines...