Here Comes 10-Mbps Wireless Throughput

During the past year, major players in the wireless arena, including Aironet Wireless Communications, Lucent Technologies, Proxim, RadioLAN, and Xircom, have been working to develop 10-Mbps products, in a move to bring wireless technology on a par with wired LANs. The arrival of 10-Mbps technology is expected to give wireless LANs the ability to carry high-quality audio and video applications along with high-speed data transmissions.

RadioLAN is one of a few companies working on higher-speed products u sing the company's narrowband RF 10BaseRadio technology. Last year RadioLAN shipped 10-Mbps wireless LAN adapters and access points, and this month it's scheduled to complete beta testing of its 10-Mbps PC Card adapters.

The patented Direct Sequence/Pulse Position Modulation (DS/PPM) technology is the only system that's backward compatible with lower-capacity wireless LANs built to the IEEE 802.11 wireless standard. At five times the transmission speed of current wireless LANs, DS/PPM can liberate users whose need for data-intensive applications has kept them tied to a desktop workstation.

The technology was created in Lucent's Bell Labs facility in the Netherlands. By combining direct-sequence and pulse-position modulations in the same signal, the number of logical possibilities in each cycle is multiplied. This, in turn, multiplies the amount of data the signal can carry without increasing the required bandwidth. It uses a modulation technique that lets wireless receivers detect several distinct pulse positions in an incoming data stream, multiplying the amount of data that can be sent in the same bandwidth.