Chinese language - Official upbeat about China's wireless growth

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Official upbeat about China's wireless growth

By Li Huayu (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-03-21 17:55

The global market for wireless local area network (WLAN) will grow at
more than 40 percent annually in the next few years and China will remain
the engine to drive this growth, according to an official with the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world rule
setting body.

"Every time I visit China, I am impressed by the astounding growth of the
IT infrastructure and new introduction of technologies, especially in the
wireless arena." Teik-Kheong Tan, an IEEE director, said. "China remains
the clear engine of growth and will likely lead the future generation of
technopreneurs."

In 2006, the value of the global WLAN market was estimated at US$5
billion. Some research organizations predict that the market scale will
maintain an annual growth rate of around 40 percent in the years to come.
However, Tan said, "I think this number is likely to be beaten."

On the heels of the failure in the tussle between its Wireless
Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) standard and the
IEEE-blessed WiFi, China is now trying again to establish an
international standard of its own. Beijing-based Nufront Software took
its proprietary high-speed broadband wireless local area network
solutions to an annual IEEE conference held last week in Orlando , the
United States.

Tan said, "China can be a key influencer for next generation WLANs. There
is already an effort within IEEE 802.11 (a sub-committee under IEEE) to
start a new study group that will look into developing specifications for
even higher throughput WLANs (greater than 1 GBps)."

"Herein lie opportunities for Chinese experts in wireless high speed
networking for both PHY and MAC to work together in an international
standards committee like IEEE to jointly define the specifications," he
added.

WiFi has two basic components - the physical (PHY) layer, which handles
transmission and reception, and the MAC layer, which stands for media
access control. Basically, the physical side is the radio and the MAC
layer is the software side of the receiving device no matter whether it
is a laptop, a personal digital assistant or other WiFi-enabled gear.

The NuFront solution has made five breakthroughs on both the PHY layer
and the MAC layer. Most importantly, it can help achieve higher
estimation precision and thus find the best modulation.

Besides, the solution, on the PHY layer, brings in a new element that
reduces the system's overhead, making its data throughput on the MAC
layer 18 to 38 percent larger than that of the existing IEEE standards.
To put it simply, it reduces redundancy during data transmission, so
transfer efficiency is increased.

With fast transfer speed and big data throughput, the Nufront solution is
expected to deliver fluent high-definition TV experience to its users,
setting a new benchmark for next-generation WLANs.

(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)

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