Networking platform paves way for dual-band, dual-concurrent WiFi

Qualcomm Atheros Inc. has rolled the QCA9005AP 802.11ac reference design targeting wireless routers, gateways and enterprise access points for business and home networks. The platform, which features the company's QCA9558 dual-band, 3-stream 802.11n SoC, the QCA9880 3-stream 802.11ac radio solution, and the AR8327 Gigabit Ethernet switch, is expected to speed mainstream adoption of Gigabit wireless products.

The platform uses an on-board processor, power efficient radio architecture and hardware acceleration to offload Wi-Fi processing from the host CPU. This architectural advantage enables efficient Gigabit wireless performance without the use of costly, power-hungry, Gigabit-class processors.

By pairing the QCA9880 802.11ac radio with the QCA9558 802.11n SoC, networking OEMs can build cost-effective and power-efficient 802.11ac-enabled products that are capable of aggregate PHY rates of up to 1.7Gb/s. This dual-band platform will help drive the market transition to the latest Wi-Fi technology and enable customers to deliver home routers, carrier gateways and enterprise access points in time for the first wave of 802.11ac certification, which the Wi-Fi Alliance has scheduled for Q1 13.

Qualcomm Atheros' 802.11ac solutions are sampling now to customers in North America, Europe, China, Korea and Japan, and they are expected to ship in volume in 2H12.