Ralink Premiers Industry’s First 450 Mbps 802.11n Router Solution with Beamforming Technology at CES 2009

Ralink Premiers Industry’s First 450 Mbps 802.11n Router Solution with Beamforming Technology at CES 2009

CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ralink Technology Corporation, a leading developer of 802.11x chipsets, today announced its new RT2883/RT2853 flagship 450 Mbps, 3 stream, 802.11n router chipset with beamforming technology. The RT2883 is an 802.11n 3 transmitter, 3 receiver (3T3R) system on a chip featuring a high performance CPU and a wealth of connectivity interfaces. Paired with the RT2853 dual band 2.4GHz/5GHz 3T3R transceiver, the RT2883 provides one of the most advanced Wi-Fi router platforms in the industry at speeds 50% faster than 2 stream draft 802.11n, and up to 8 times faster than legacy 802.11 a/g devices on the market. The RT2883/RT2853 chipset’s beamforming capability extends its Wi-Fi range to meet digital home multimedia coverage requirements.

“In addition to 450Mbps raw throughput and beamforming, the RT2883/RT2853 is enhanced with a multitude of advanced features such as Maximum Likelihood Detection (MLD) and Adaptive Channel Estimation and Equalization (ACE) to overcome difficult indoor environments”, said Fred Jann, Vice President of IC Design at Ralink. “It also introduces Ralink Video Turbine technology defining a new paradigm in Wi-Fi by enabling reliable distribution of multiple high-quality video streams throughout the home or office.”

Background

The early success of Wi-Fi technology has been mainly PC centric. Wi-Fi was used to connect commercial and consumer laptops and desktops to the corporate network or the internet via a router to access e-mail and websites that consisted mostly of text and simple graphics. The market has made a major shift in the last few years. The proliferation of digital music, high quality digital photos, gaming devices and SD & HD video in homes and on the internet is driving the demand for greater Wi-Fi performance and coverage beyond 2 stream, 300 Mbps draft 802.11n. Ralink’s RT2883 SoC and RT2853 transceiver arrive just as consumers’ expectations are beginning to ramp.

Superior Wi-Fi Coverage

The RT2883/RT2853 chipset is the first to implement transmit beamforming technology. With beamforming technology, the RT2883/2853 intelligently determines a client’s distance and location, and controls its transmitted power and phase to optimize received power at the client. This enables superior Wi-Fi coverage, interference mitigation, and a more reliable connection. The RT2883/RT2853 is compatible with the newly added beamforming clauses in the IEEE’s latest draft 802.11n standard. In addition, Ralink implements a proprietary implicit beamforming technique that can be used with any client, even if they do not support the IEEE’s beamforming protocols. On the receive side, the RT2883/RT2853 employs the latest digital signal processing algorithms such as Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC), and Maximum Likelihood Detection (MLD) and Adaptive Channel Estimation and Equalization (ACE) to ensure robust reception of packets. ACE is Ralink’s patented methodology for tracking changes in the environment and continuously optimizing the receiver for maximum performance.

Ralink Video Turbine

With the advent of digital video, there has been an explosion of content that has become available, both from the internet and from service providers. Consumers want to know how they can conveniently distribute this content to their computers, TV’s, set top boxes, and mobile devices. Video Turbine by Ralink is the answer. It is a combination of technologies used to provide reliable bandwidth for video transmission and reception over Wi-Fi. Ralink has taken the best standards based quality of service (QoS) technologies like Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) and Wi-Fi Multimedia Access (WMM-AC), and combined them with Ralink’s own proprietary rate adaptation algorithms, traffic classifiers and distinct controls for audio and video packets to make reliable video distribution over Wi-Fi a reality.

Unsurpassed Wi-Fi Performance

Ralink’s advanced 3T3R architecture implements true 3 stream 802.11n technology, enabling PHY rates of up to 450 Mbps, the highest performance on the market, to address concurrent delivery of data, voice and HD video throughout the home or office. The RT2883 features a 500 MHz MIPS CPU, Hardware Network Address Translation (NAT), and hardware frame aggregation to speed packets to their destination. Connectivity options include an RGMII interface to connect a Gigabit PHY or switch; a 480 Mbps USB 2.0 interface for storage or CE applications; and a PCI Express interface for dual band concurrent applications. The RT2883 also supports SPI, I2C and PCM interfaces for audio and VoIP applications. Ralink’s RT2883/RT2853 is fully compatible with Intel’s Ultimate N Wi-Fi Link 5300 3T3R, 450 Mbps PCIe client cards. The RT2883/RT2853 3T3R 802.11n Router reference design kit includes a complete turnkey platform including a full Linux 2.6 Router software stack. Samples will be available for evaluation in Q2 2009. Pricing is available upon request. For more information please contact your Ralink sales personnel or make an appointment to visit us at CES 2009. ■