Move over, telematics. Although wireless innovations for automobiles will continue to foster development for years to come, a new target has emerged in the transportation industry: passenger airplanes. With the release of its wideband wireless-local-area-network (WLAN) chip set, Engim (www.engim.com) is announcing the industry's first All Services Access Point (ASAP) processor along with a new line of vendor-ready access points.
Matrx Aerospace Broadband Technologies has already chosen this solution for the delivery of new wireless communications services to commercial aviation passengers, flight crews, and command and control staffs. The Matrx Galaxy System is a multi-channel, multi-band system that supports cabin and operations services. Among the new in-flight passenger services that it enables are multimedia entertainment, voice-over-WLAN, and Internet access. The Matrx Galaxy system also provides aircraft health monitoring, security, and subsystem control. Previously, such services were unattainable due to the capacity limitations, limited services scope, interference issues, and instabilities of first-generation, single-channel 802.11 solutions.
In contrast, Engim's EN-3001 Intelligent Wideband WLAN chip set employs Wideband Spectral Processing technology (SEE FIGURE). By providing high levels of interference mitigation, this technology can enable multi-channel capacity and WLAN quality of service with manageability and security. It allows simultaneous communication and intelligent traffic and service grooming across multiple channels of 802.11b/g and 802.11a. With an EN-3001-based device, vendors should be able to concurrently support the enterprise's full array of applications, such as voice, video, data, security, asset tracking, and management. Until now, many of those functions and services demanded the deployment of expensive, separate layers of Wi-Fi equipment.
The EN-3001 sustains very high performance levels. Because it also is fully programmable, the chip set helps developers invoke and leverage its real-time-traffic WLAN intelligence. Developers can create solutions that support a full array of applications and environments or are optimized for individual customer and environmental needs.
With the release of the EN-3001, Engim also is delivering the AP-310 All Services Access Point and the AP-320 Thin All Services Access Point. These access points offer all of the multi-channel benefits of the EN-3001 chip set. They promise to simultaneously support any combination of current and emerging enterprise Wi-Fi services. Together, Engim's EN-3001 chip set and AP-310 and AP-320 access points allow 802.11 equipment manufacturers to rapidly introduce all-services solutions. Those solutions will offer service flexibility, performance, integrity, and security that can meet or exceed those aspects of today's wired-Ethernet enterprise networks.
Aside from sending Wi-Fi into the sky, Engim's new solutions should enable Wi-Fi equipment manufacturers and IT managers to redefine their networks' services capacity and functionality. They also should reap performance and economic benefits. EN-3001-based solutions promise to "future-proof" Wi-Fi networks for large-scale client growth; the ongoing addition of real-time, business-critical applications; and mesh-network capability.
This chip set's multi-channel approach enables access points that provide support for any combination of security and intrusion detection, data-voice convergence, enhanced WLAN management, and location determination.