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Redesigned board addresses multipath-interference issue in most office environments
SUNNYVALE, CALIF. - After a 15month hiatus to redesign its system board from scratch, RadioLAN Inc. has resurfaced, claiming success in developing a 10Mbit/second narrowband 5.8GHz wireless LAN that overcomes multipath interference in virtually any office environment. The company turned from an 8051-based downloaded-controller architecture to one built around a dedicated ASIC that handles all antenna diversity protocols, as well as most radio-access protocols.
The debut of 10BaseRadio as a shipping product follows a failure to deliver production units in early 1995, due to multipath-interference problems in office environments. In mid-1995, RadioLAN cut staff to a core engineering team, assigning one group to examine how the original 8051-based system could be modified for better antenna diversity and another to investigate a complete redesign.
"We realized we could significantly improve performance if we were willing to fully redesign the baseband and RF sections of the system," said Mark Bosse, director of marketing. "The new RF amp section uses a scheme that is almost akin to a pulse-amplitudemodulation scheme. But to implement the new ideas, we had to get the board to agree last November to let us redesign the system from scratch."
In July, RadioLAN tested a...