Ericsson Touts Next-generation Wireless

Ericsson is storming ahead in the wireless arena after claiming to have successfully demonstrated a wireless local area network built on the HiperLAN2 next-generation wireless standard.

HiperLAN2 is being touted by the likes of Ericsson as the future wireless standard, as it offers data rates of up to 54 Mbps across a 5Ghz frequency. The mobile developer has built a chipset on a PC card, which acts as an access point for the wireless connection. Ericsson says that the system is built on radio technology known as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM), which they claim is “ideal for broadband applications”.

One of the key advantages of HiperLAN 32 presented by Ericsson is that it offers a convergence layer, which enables interoperability with Ethernet, Firewire and third-generation mobile systems. Ericsson says that interoperability is important as wireless LANs are typically deployed as an Ethernet extension.

Ericsson points to the technology being deployed across corporate networks to allow greater access and coverage for mobile users with laptops or PDA’s, and giving “untethered access to the corporate network, the internet or virtually any type of wireless network, offering seamless interoperation between these different network environments”.