Members of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) on Thursday have adjourned
their meeting without reaching a consensus on specifications to be used on
chipsets for all next-generation 802.11g products — which will transmit
data at rates at 20+ megabits per second (Mbps).
Industry observers have been keenly watching the outcome of the Orlando,
Fla., meeting for specifications that would essentially double the current
data transmission rates, enabling true multimedia content to be streamed
over wireless local area network (WLAN) environment, which relies on data
transmission over the unlicensed 2.4GHz spectrum space.
But the meeting of about 175 members turned into a two-way contest
between Intersil, which submitted one
proposal known as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)
modulation, and Texas Instruments (TI),
which has developed its own Packet Binary Convolution Coding (PBCC)
technology. TI’s proposal was taken out of the running in a preliminary
voting round on Wednesday after not garnering majority support by the IEEE’s
802.11g Task Force.
“There’s not going to be an 11g standard coming out of Orlando,” TI’s
Wireless Networking Business General Manager Mike Hogan told
InternetNews.com in a telephone interview. “In the end, no vote was taken
which we thought was unfortunate because we wanted to get some work
done…it’s clear we’re not out of the woods in picking an 11g standard.”
In order for Intersil’s OFDM specification — which is now the sole
candidate to be considered by the IEEE — to proceed, over 75 percent of the
Task Force needed to ratify the proposal. After which, it would have then
gone to the IEEE’s larger 802.11 Working Group for procedural voting before
officially becoming an IEEE recommendation. But complicating matters on
Thursday was a two-hour procedural debate among members of the .11g Task
Force.
According to officials from Irvine, Calif.-based Intersil, the bipartisan
rancor was sparked after .11g Task Force Chairman Matthew B. Shoemake,
Ph.D., ruled that Intersil’s OFDM would no longer be considered because the proposal couldn’t muster the support of 75 percent of the group — the mandatory threshold. (Shoemake is a TI official
of Alantro Communications, which the Dallas-based multinational acquired
last summer for $300 million to support its PBCC development efforts.)
If OFDM was eliminated for consideration by the IEEE, the Task Force
would have been forced to essentially go back to the drawing board,
requesting new proposals be resubmitted. But citing statutes from the IEEE
Proposal Selection Process, Jim Zyren, Director of Marketing at Intersil’s
PRISM Wireless Products business, appealed the chairman’s ruling.
Zyren’s appeal was subsequently upheld; however, after the two-hour
debate, no time was left for voting.
“I think the consensus of the group is they’d like to move forward,”
Zyren told InternetNews.com in an interview.
The IEEE certainly has other items on its agenda, working on other
specifications such as 802.11e (for voice transmission and security) and
.11a (which promises data rates of 54 Mbps). Because of the current
limitations of 802.11b technology (which promises theoretical transmission
speeds of 11 Mbps), company officials from California to Canada are
anxiously anticipating the arrival of high-speed capabilities.
“What .11g offers is how to get to higher data rates without large
incremental costs,” explained Navin Sabharwal, vice president of residential
and networking technologies at Allied Business Intelligence (ABI), an Oyster
Bay, NY-based think tank.
Intersil’s OFDM proposal now will go before the IEEE’s .11g Task Force
for ratification at its Portland, Ore., meeting in July. Members will vote
round-robin style until the 75-percent threshold can be met. (If say only 60
percent ratify, the remaining 40 percent would be asked to modify the
proposal, etc., until 75 percent is obtained.)
“I’m very optimistic that we’re going to cross the 75-percent threshold
at the July meeting,” Zyren said.
This round-robin procedure of voting-and-modifying was the case in 1999
during the adoption of 802.11b. Then, Intersil ultimated convinced
supporters of a proposal from Lucent Technologies to back a hybrid
specification for transmitting data at 11Mbps. But Zryen explained the
present case involving Intersil and TI is dramatically different.
“With 802.11b, we had 2 proposals that had common ground. OFDM is a
multiple-carrier proposal. PBCC is a single-carrier proposal. It’s is very
difficult to find common ground because the two proposals are so different.
No mutually acceptable compromise position has been identified.”
To be sure, TI officials emphasized that IEEE’s inactions won’t hamper
its development in WLANs.
“If anyone was to think that the vote on wednesday would dramatically
impact our plan for wireless LAN, that’s just not true,” TI’s Hogan said.
