Motorola Invests in High-Def Wireless Technology

Motorola Inc.'s venture capital arm has invested in Amimon Inc., an Israeli company that designs chips for wirelessly transmitting high-definition video.

Amimon -- a fabless semiconductor company -- designs wireless high-definition interface (WHDI) chipsets, modules and reference designs. WHDI enables the transmission of an uncompressed video signal between devices such as a digital set-top box and a high-definition TV.

Motorola, which did not say how much it invested, said Amimon's work fits in with its own strategy of letting consumers share and access stored media on devices around the home.

Motorola said it hopes WHDI, which can be incorporated into other hardware such as wireless projectors, becomes a new industry standard. Amimon said WHDI can project up to 100 feet through walls with a latency of less that one millisecond.

WHDI uses the unlicensed 5GHz band and can send uncompressed HD video streams at up to 3G bps (bits per second) using 40MHz of bandwidth, according to the company's Web site. That complies with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission rules, it said.

A slower rate of 1.5G bps is possible using 20MHz of bandwidth, which conforms to other worldwide spectrum regulations, Amimon said.

Amimon's other investors include Argonaut Partners LLC, Cedar Fund, Evergreen Venture Partners, Stata Venture Partners and Walden Israel Venture Capital.