Qualcomm adds to IPR stable with Airgo buy

First OFDMA and now MIMO. Qualcomm Inc.’s acquisition of Airgo Networks and its Multiple-Input, Multiple-Out technology, as well as the company’s previous purchase of Flarion Technologies Inc., position Qualcomm to play big in future wireless broadband.
The behemoth San Diego-based chipmaker last week announced it is buying MIMO pioneer Airgo for an undisclosed amount to extend its mobile broadband offering by integrating Airgo’s 802.11a/b/g and 802.11n technology into its cell-phone chips. Qualcomm also plans to use Airgo’s technology in its Snapdragon platform, a chip product designed for broader consumer electronics deployments.
The acquisition is reminiscent of Qualcomm’s purchase of Flarion, which effectively gave Qualcomm intellectual property rights for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access technology, the basis for the WiMAX protocol. Only this time the IPR is for MIMO.
“This acquisition enables integrated products with wireless [local area network] and wireless [wide area network] capabilities to deliver a seamless-connectivity experience for users,” said Greg Raleigh, president and chief executive officer of Airgo.
Airgo’s MIMO technology has become the base of the IEEE’s 802.11n standard for higher Wi-Fi throughputs. Over the past few years, Airgo has sold about 3 million in-home MIMO-powered products under the Linksys and Netgear brands. In October, Airgo’s Dave Borison, director of product management, commented that the next wave of products to be shipped with MIMO is laptops, with other mobile consumer electronics devices set to follow. Borison said Airgo estimated the MIMO-enabled Wi-Fi market to be worth about $3 billion.
MIMO refers to transceivers and receivers. Instead of Single-Input, Single-Output antenna architecture, which seeks to eliminate multi-path propagation, MIMO takes advantage of multi-path propagation, which results in increased data throughput and range due to reduced bit error rates. And, MIMO achieves this using no additional bandwidth or power. Overall, MIMO is said to increase the spectral efficiency of wireless networks.
Airgo’s TrueMIMO technology was showcased in two recent wireless-in-the-home product launches, and although 802.11n technology will not be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance until sometime next year, Airgo is shipping products built according to the IEEE’s draft 2 specifications that is said to deliver Wi-Fi at speeds up to 540 megabits per second.
However, Airgo’s Borison explained that “MIMO can be applied to any wireless communications system.” He also pointed out that MIMO technology can increase the reliability of a network by collecting multiple signals, including echoes, and then rebuilding the signals into a stronger signal.
At the October WiMAX World trade show, practically every vendor launching WiMAX gear touted MIMO as part of its solution, including Alcatel Inc., Fujitsu Network Communications, Motorola Inc., Nortel Networks Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp.
Nonetheless, Jeff Orr, director of marketing at the WiMAX Forum, noted MIMO is an optional testing module within Release 1.0, Wave 2 of 802.16-2005, which is estimated to be approved by the third quarter of 2007.
Furthermore, Orr said the WiMAX Forum believes there are sufficient products under development today to begin certification testing in that timeframe and stressed that “products can be submitted with MIMO, but it is not a required element for certification.”
Nonetheless, even if MIMO isn’t part of the WiMAX standard, carriers may demand that the technology be included in the equipment they deploy into their networks. Jim Parker, senior manager of Wireless Terminals at Samsung noted, “Sprint [Nextel Corp.] has announced that they will deploy only Wave 2 devices and infrastructure into the network-all Wave 2 devices and infrastructure will support MIMO.”
Airgo launched in January of 2001 and has raised about $132 million in funding from Acell Partners, Sevin Rosen Funds, OVP Venture Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Blue Run Ventures and Meritech Capital.
Qualcomm expects to close the deal by the end of the year.