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IEEE 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.