802.11n Standard Stalls Again

By Eric Griffith

At the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 Working Group Meeting this week in Australia, the vote was made in Task Group N again to see which group—the World Wide Spectrum Efficiency (WWiSE) consortium or TGn Sync —would lead the way to a new high speed Wi-Fi technology standard called 802.11n designed to deliver 100Mbps throughput on wireless networks.

Neither won the votes need to be come the basis for a standard, however —for the second time.

TGn Sync, which is backed by companies like Atheros, Agere, Intel, and Qualcomm, had a majority at the previous vote in March (56%) but this time only got 49%. However, a ``super majority`` of 75% or higher is required by the rules of the IEEE standards process. Without it, the groups involved start over again as they were brand new, lobbying Working Group voting members for support.

According to ComputerWorld, this vote came after TGn Sync member tried to adjourn the meeting without taking the vote.

Luckily there are just the two groups left to try and compromise for a solution. Last year there were several proposals, both partial and complete, the latter being those that define all the requirements including changes to the Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) layers of 802.11. Almost all were eventually were subsumed into WWiSE or TGn Sync. It took a little longer, but hold-outs Motorola and Qualcomm pulled their complete proposals to join in the larger groups, as well.

Both TGn Sync and WWiSE proposals hinge on the use of multiple in, multiple out (MIMO) technology to get the high throughput and extended range desired of 802.11n, but differ on the specifics of how to implement it. TGn Sync wants mandatory channel widths of 40MHz with a minimum of two antennas; WWiSE wants 20MHz channels as mandatory but with more antennas, which it feels is a more regulation-friendly way of working with areas like Europe and Japan where the wider channels are not currently permitted.

WWiSE is backed by names like Texas Instruments, Motorola, and Airgo Networks, which developed much of the MIMO technology. Airgo sells the TRUE MIMO chips in use in products today from companies like Belkin and Linksys in what some call ``Pre-N`` products.

WWiSE member Broadcom issued a statement this morning saying that ``this week`s confirmation vote creates a situation where a collaborative proposal is seemingly in everyone`s best interest.`` That outlook doesn`t seem to be doing much to clear the voting stalemate.

The next meeting of the 802.11 Working Group, and the 11n Task Group, will be in July in San Francisco.