IDF: Intel Mobile WiMax Card Coming This Year

SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel on Tuesday demonstrated the technology on which mobile WiMax will be based and said it will deliver a PC Card using the system in the second half of this year.

Mobile WiMax is a wide-area network technology intended to deliver 1 megabit per second or more to devices in motion. It will be based on IEEE 802.16e, a specification approved late last year, and products will be certified by the WiMax Forum industry group. Intel and other vendors have come under criticism over the past few years for over-hyping WiMax. Intel has forecast that WiMax will spread like Wi-Fi wireless LANs have, thanks to standardized high-volume manufacturing.

Sean Maloney, Intel executive vice president and general manager of its mobility group, demonstrated the technology during a keynote address at Intel Developer Forum here. In the demonstration, Maloney used an 802.16e PC Card in a notebook that was attached to an electric scooter and was based on Intel's Napa platform. The system delivered about 2 mbps of throughput and supported a live video blog from a camera on the scooter, as well as presenting driving directions and a real-time weather forecast from the Web.

WiMax can be used in any of a broad range of frequency bands, and different bands are expected to be used in different regions, in most cases by carriers who have licensed the spectrum. The PC Card coming this year will use the 2.3-GHz-to-2.5-GHz band, which Maloney said is being examined for WiMax in Asia. In the U.S., Sprint Nextel holds a large number of licenses for spectrum around the 2.5-GHz band and ClearWire already offers a mobile wireless broadband service in that frequency range in some areas.

Chip Set Also on Display

Maloney also showed off a prototype chip set for both WiMax and Wi-Fi, capable of shifting among frequencies in the 2.3-GHz to 2.5-GHz band, the 3.5-GHz band, and the entire 5-GHz band, he said. Those ranges encompass the 2.4-GHz and 5.8-GHz bands that are used for 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi wireless LANs, as well as the upcoming high-speed 802.11n Wi-Fi specification, he said.

Within about three years, Intel expects Wi-Fi and WiMax to merge onto one chip set, Maloney said. The chip set shown on Tuesday is the first step toward that, Maloney said.

The first generation of WiMax products, designed for use in one place, hit the market in certified form in late January after some missed targets in standards approval and testing. Maloney said there have been "significant" increases in volume and declines in prices on those products already.