Spectrum hog leads the race for 802.11n ratification

The 802.11n task grouplast weeknarrowed the number of candidates for the new wireless Ethernet standard 802.11n to just two. The significance of this is that the clear leader of the two remaining candidates, TgnSync, is unfortunately a spectrum hog. The trailing candidate WWiSE ironically stands for "World-Wide Spectrum Efficiency."

There are already two products on the shelf (Belkin and Linksys) using an Airgo MIMO chipsetthat falls into the WWiSE camp. Belkin released the first Airgo-based product and had some very impressiveresults from Tim Higgins. Belkin's implementation of Airgo's MIMO technology was able to sustain a throughput of over 40 megabits per second.

TgnSync, on the other hand, has no products on the shelf and uses two of three available 2.4 GHz channels for the purpose of attaining very high data transmission throughput. It's bad enough that there is already a scarcity of channels in the 2.4 GHz space; TgnSync (if it wins ratification)would make things twice as bad. Although higher throughput is always welcome, 40 megabits per second is even sufficient for the transmission of HDTV, which weighs in at 28 megabits per second, and DVD, whichneeds no more than 8 megabits per second. What's needed is spectrum harmony, not spectrum hogs.