ChipCrunch.com

Back in March we covered TimeFlux technology from LightWaves. The article sparked quite a discussion with people referencing the Shannon-Hartley theorem, time-frequency duality, and so on while discussing the performance claims made by LightWaves. The discussion focused mainly on wired networking and the ability to provide proper bandwidth and latency for real-time data streaming. Assuming that all this data in some way or another arrives at a particular location, be it an enterprise LAN or a home network, a good way to distribute it to all the clients will still be needed. With UWB technology floundering as of later, it seems that an alternate wireless distribution method will be needed.

This is precisely the market Quantenna is targeting: reliable high-speed wireless coverage for high definition (HD) video and related multimedia content. Based out of Freemont, CA the company recently raised $14 million in Series C funding from Southern Cross Venture Partners, Grazia Equity Gmbh, Sequoia Capital, Sigma Partners, and Venrock Associates. Founded back in 2006, Quantenna has raised a very respectable $42 million in venture funding to date. The Series C funding is mostly to be used for expanding sales and engineering activities. Currently, the company offers free flavors of their 802.11n Wi-Fi compliant chipsets: the QHS1000, the QHS600, and the QHS450. The numbers in the product names correspond to the maximum link speed that each chipset is able to support. The flagship product, the QHS1000, can operate in the 2.4 and 5 GHz spectrum concurrently, while the latter two work exclusively in the 5 and 2.4 GHz spectrums, respectively. The two most touted features that these chipsets support are the 4x4 multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) technology and dynamic digital beamforming.

According to the company press release, the combination of these technologies results in a four time larger coverage area and twice the throughput of existing solutions. At the same time the product page states that these technologies provide a 50 percent performance improvement over other 802.11n solutions. I’m not a networking expert by a long shot, but if you claim twice the throughput and a four time larger coverage area, wouldn’t this indicate more than a 50 percent performance improvement? Of course, it can be that performance includes additional factors that are not accounted for in the initial statement, or maybe the baselines for the two comparisons are different, nevertheless some clarification would be appreciated. The 4x4 configuration refers to four radio transceivers and four antennas which in addition to supporting two data streams can utilize the extra two antennas for dynamic digital beamforming to increase data stream reliability by 12dB over 3x3 configurations. Optimum performance is achieved by continually monitoring real-time packet data and adjusting the wireless signals in milliseconds as needed. A short video describing beamforming can be viewed on the company’s website. Additionally, Quantenna has filed several patent applications including one for a tunable antenna system and one for interference rejection, in case you might enjoy further reading.