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Consumer demand for rich multimedia content has skyrocketed in recent years. One example is the explosive sales of digital music. In a recent study market research firm iSuppli noted that digital music will grow from 1.5 percent of all music sales in the U.S. in 2004 to 25 percent by 2008. Other forms of digital content are certainly growing at comparable rates. Given these trends, it is inevitable that consumers will demand more elegant ways of enjoying the content they are acquiring. Consumers have paid considerable amounts of hard-earned cash for content that is difficult to experience because of the encumbrances of wires and other technical limitations. WLAN technology embedded in CE devices offers consumers a glimmer of hope that someday soon they will be free to experience their media content on their terms.
Today, video clips of news events and trailers, entire movies, music, photographs, music videos, pod-casts, animated e-mails, educational multimedia content and much more are flooding the Internet and many consumers are downloading and saving this rich content. Especially with purchased content like music, games and movies, consumers want to be able to move content from device to device, and take it with them when they leave home. In today's mobile society, consumers balk at any limitations on where and when they might be able to experience their growing cache of rich multimedia content.
Unfortunately, several bottlenecks currently slow down the flow of multimedia content for most consumers. Practically all content must go through a personal computer, which must be cabled to other devices in order to transfer or share this content. Often, the very act of connecting a cable to a connector on the back of a PC is clumsy, awkward and frustrating for consumers. As more wireless networks are deployed in homes and public places, and as WLAN technology is embedded into more CE products, consumers will begin to realize how true networking, not just cable replacement, enhances the enjoyment of multimedia content.
Indeed, wireless networking has evolved considerably since its early days, but the availability of digital content and the need to share it has begun to usher in a wider proliferation of WLAN technology.
In general, interest in wireless networks began building with the rise of the Internet, but the accelerated adoption of broadband connectivity in recent years has given WLAN technology another boost. In the year 2005, for instance, market research firm iSuppli estimated that 195 million households worldwide subscribed to one kind of broadband service or another.
Of course, with all of the broadband throughput arriving at the doorsteps of residences across the globe, consumers had to determine what to do with it. Initially at least, the broadband pipe was most often connected to only one PC for fast access to the Internet. Eventually, homeowners wanted to share the broadband bandwidth among several PCs and that usually meant some form of home networking.
Wireless Data
WLAN-based networks were an obvious choice for many consumers who did not relish the thought of clambering through attics to string cables from room to room. Another driving force behind WLAN technology was the increasing affordability of the technology itself. Moreover, its deployment in a wide range of access devices such as standalone routers and access points, and later in combination with DSL and cable modems, again simplified deployment and brought WLAN networking to a broader swath of consumers.
While the marketplace for WLAN-based networking was gaining momentum, various refinements and upgrades to the 802.11 standard have improved the technology's performance parameters. Texas Instruments (TI) expects that 802.11g will continue the growth momentum in the marketplace for quite some time and has therefore made enhancements to its 11g product portfolio. TI's G++ WLAN technology has been optimized for high throughput rates as well as extended whole-house coverage. In addition, the robustness of G++ technology can overcome the common sources of interference found in many homes and public places, such as microwave ovens, cordless phones and other WLAN networks in close proximity.
Eventually, research and development will yield additional improvements to WLAN performance parameters and these will be incorporated into newer versions of the standard.
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