Atheros joins draft 11n chip club

Santa Clara (CA) - Atheros Communications today officially launched its draft 802.11n product line.

The AR5008 is the first in the XSPAN family of wireless LAN technologies and is based on the draft 802.11n specification confirmed last week by the IEEE. The chipset employs MIMO technology with a "triple-radio RF design" that the company says will deliver "six times the throughput of 802.11g and 802.11a/g products at extended range and with greater reliability".

Atheros also said the AR5008 delivers up to 300 megabits-per-second (Mbps) physical data rate with "real end-user throughput of 150 to 180 Mbps", crediting its ability to simultaneously transmit across three spatially-diverse signal paths, and simultaneously incorporate information from three receivers.

The AR5008 is a two-chip solution with a choice of two different baseband/MAC chips (PCI or PCI Express host interfaces) combined with 2.4GHz single-band or 2.4 / 5GHz dual-band radio chips.

Atheros is currently sampling the AR5008 chipset to its customers. Pricing was not given.