Saturday, May 31, 2008

Ozmo Develops Low-Power Wi-Fi Personal Area Network

Ozmo Devices, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, unveiled its low-power silicon + software solution for Wi-Fi Personal Area Networks (Wi-Fi PANs). The technology extends the existing Wi-Fi ecosystem while providing an alternative to Bluetooth or other short range wireless technologies.


The company aims to bring native low-power peripheral connectivity to Wi-Fi platforms. With an estimated 100 million Wi-Fi-enabled notebooks expected to ship in 2008, Ozmo's low-power Wi-Fi chip could enable connected mice, headsets and other personal electronics. Ozmo Devices' approach does not require an additional radio inside the platform or a dongle to communicate with the peripheral. The technology achieves a data rate of up to 9 Mbps and a latency significantly below standard Wi-Fi. Ozmo achieves this using a TDMA-like overlay protocol, however it uses standard 802.11-based packets for native coexistence with Wi-Fi networks. The implementation also supports 802.11-compliant security



Ozmo's PAN technology includes a software driver that delivers native low-power peripheral connectivity to the platform and an highly integrated, ultra-low-power IC in the wireless peripheral that seamlessly communicates with the platform. The solution is currently sampling and production-ready development efforts are underway at key peripheral product OEMs.


Ozmo Devices was founded as H-Stream Wireless in December 2004. The company is privately held and funded by Granite Ventures, Intel Capital, and Tallwood Venture Capital.


http://www.ozmodevices.com
  • Ozmo Devices is headed by Dave Timm, who previously spent 15 years at Maxim Integrated Products, where he was Managing Director of the Notebook Power Business Unit. The company was co-founded by Dr. Katelijn Vleugels (CTO), who previously was with Atheros and who served as a Consulting Assistant Professor at Stanford, and Roel Peeters (Vice President of Marketing), who previously was a senior member of the solutions marketing group at Actuate, a business intelligence software company.

Atheros Introduces Dual-radio 802.11n Router Platform

Atheros Communications introduced its XSPAN single-board, dual-radio router platform featuring single-chip 802.11n technology. The AR9002AP platform provides up to 600 Mbps of wireless networking capacity to support the growing number of devices on the home network-simultaneously.


Atheros said its new AR9002AP platform leverages the efficiencies of single-chip 11n technologies to significantly reduce the cost of dual-radio networking products. It features the AR9220 and AR9223 11n single-chip radio/MAC/BB designs to support the 5 and 2.4 GHz bands, respectively. At the core of the AR9002AP platform is Atheros' AR7161 high-performance, 680MHz wireless networking CPU-engineered to maximize 802.11n performance. The platform also offers Atheros ETHOS AR8216 Fast Ethernet or AR8316 Gigabit Ethernet switch options. The system has been integrated on a single, compact circuit board that requires up to 50 percent fewer components than competitive solutions on the market.


With simultaneous operation in both bands, the router can rely on the relatively interference-free 5GHz band to support latency-sensitive, high-bandwidth applications like HD video streaming, while off-loading latency-tolerant data transmissions such as email and Internet browsing to the more interference-prone 2.4GHz band. This delegation of applications also allows the 2.4GHz band to support legacy 802.11g Wi-Fi devices, which can slow down 11n networks, leaving the 5GHz band free to provide the optimized 11n performance required for smooth media transmissions.


The AR9002AP solutions is currently sampling to key customers.http://www.atheros.com