Engim WLAN chipset cuts costs

Engim has announced a WLAN chipset with improved performance and integrated Ethernet interfaces.

Semiconductor advances are cutting costs by shrinking the number of chips needed and putting more functions on the chips themselves, instead of on separate, external components (see chip news from Atheros). Higher throughput, longer range, and improved security are some of the main targets of the new products.

Engim, in Acton, Mass., has released the EN-3001 chipset, along with two complete access points that are intended as starter designs for manufacturers. It's still a three-chip package, but two of the three are new designs.

The new radio frequency chip, at either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz, now includes a technique to minimize the interference that a transmitting antenna on an access point can have on the nearby receive antenna. With a cleaner signal, the receiver has a longer range and higher throughput over that distance.

The new digital baseband chip now adds two Ethernet media access control interfaces, instead of just the miniPCI interface of the previous chip. The new MACs let the chip process packets and send them directly to an Ethernet connection instead of having this done by additional components outside the chip. That change will reduce manufacturing costs and complexity.

The new chipset has been picked up by Matrx Aerospace Broadband Technologies, which will incorporate the silicon in its Galaxy product line. Galaxy is a wireless base station designed for to create a WLAN aboard aircraft, able to support data communications for the aircraft's operations as well as for multimedia, voice traffic, and Internet access for passengers.

The Engim chipset can listen to the entire swath of available WLAN channels, filter out interference, and so boost throughput because it can use all those channels at the same time. Rival chips typically use just one channel.

As a result of this 'multi-band' design, an access point could dedicate one channel to continuously scan for unauthorized users or interference sources, or segregate voice-over-WLAN phones on one or more channels away from data traffic.

The two new access point designs, one a conventional thick access point, one a streamlined thin device, are built around the EN-3001. The total "bill of materials," or the cost of the components needed to assemble the access point, are under $100, says Scott Lindsay, Engim's vice president of marketing. "We put a lot of work in reducing the chipset costs and the costs of the entire access point," he says. "We use all standard, off-the-shelf components. This [cost] puts us right in line with the costs of today's [rival] enterprise access points."

The new products are available to manufacturers now.