Ralink Technology has already shipped some 45 million WiFi chipsets, but says it is especially proud of its latest addition, which it claims to be the industry's longest range draft-802.11n WiFi chipset. The company says that the RT2800 chipset doubles the range of high-performance wireless systems, eliminating reception shadows in homes, offices, and metro networks. The chip achieves this long-range reception through a patented, low-noise circuitry which pinpoints and recovers the high-speed 802.11n streams of data.
The 802.11n standard is still in draft status, but designs are underway and end-user products are entering the market. The company says that the chipset is designed so that it is software-upgradeable to changes to the draft-802.11n. Note that the USB 2.0 version of the Ralink chipset has a patented antenna which, the company says, is an industry first because it is contained inside a small housing that enables the entire draft-802.11n design to fit inside the small footprint of a USB package. The USB 2.0 chipset is also the first draft-802.11n solution to offer its software driver in optional onboard flash memory instead of on a CD-ROM disk.
For more on the RT2800:
- see this press release