Celeno Communications, a startup designing a variant of Wi-Fi chips geared for video, has closed a $16 million funding round led by Cisco Systems, reports EE Times.
Celeno is currently sampling a 5 GHz chip set for carrying video at distances up to 120 feet, according to the company. The new funding will help the company gear up sales and marketing for the current chip and design efforts on a second-generation.
Celeno competes with Amimon, another Israel-based chip startup with a similar goal. Amimon is shipping a 5 GHz chip that uses a novel encoding approach to deliver video throughout a home.
Celeno says its baseband uses beam-forming MIMO and “channel aware” approaches can deliver as much as 10 times the range and as much as twice the throughput of 802.11n chips, but has not described exactly how its approach works. Celeno’s core competency is based on spatial radio switching combined with adaptive channel coding, dynamic time-space scheduling, and multimedia QoS optimization.
Three wireless systems for connecting HDTVs are competing for the home, says EE Times. This “battle of technologies” is being fought between three contending systems, 5 GHz, 60 GHz, and ultra wideband (UWB), according to ABI Research. Most established wireless vendors are waiting to see how the market evolves, says the research firm.
- WirelessHD uses 60-GHz transmission. The bandwidth available at 60 GHz allows data transmissions as fast as 4 Gbits/s. The format is backed by lead technology developer SiBeam, along with Intel, LG, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.
- Wireless High Definition Interface (WHDI), using 5 GHz. WHDI, developed by Israeli company Amimon, reportedly achieves a data rate as fast as 3 Gbits/s. WiFi 802.11n technology using MIMO can achieve up to 600 mbps, but cannot yield a 3-Gbit/s data rate. For that, Amimon tapped an existing signal-processing technology called joint-source channel coding.
- WiMedia Alliance uses Ultrawideband (UWB) in a band of frequencies from 4.2 to 4.8 GHz or higher. Their Wireless USB standard claims a data rate of 480 Mbits/s and works by compressing and expanding HD video images.
There is no consensus among consumer manufacturers on a single standard or unified wireless HD format. But wireless connections are expected to simplify A/V installations and allow more flexibility in positioning TVs.
