Start-up firm Quantenna Communications announced a high-end 802.11n silicon chip that enables gigabit throughput speeds, the company said.
The product uses 4 x 4 MIMO antennas along with beam forming and mesh technologies to enable an aggregate gigabit-speed throughput.
The company uses two chips, one each for 2.4 and 5 GHz links. Quantenna claims it delivers twice the 300 megabits per second physical layer throughput of existing WiFi chips.
The company added its chip's form-factor is four to five times smaller, the two-chip design measuring about 2.5 x 2 inches to enable plug-in devices such as the Apple Airport Express.
The chips use mesh networking based on concepts current under discussion within the 802.11s group, where each node acts as an access point, Quantenna said.