Jim - One detail that you forgot to mention is that
for the same size antenna, you get that loss back as
increased antenna gain at 5.850 GHz since the antenna
is electrically larger by the same ratio. So the link
loss may work out to be the same at the two different
frequencies!
Or close, but thats not all I failed to mention.
OFDM (802.11a and 802.11g) radios have a higher peek-to-average power
ratio, which makes it more difficult to design high-power amps that work
(and remain legal) than, say, for 802.11b. There are always engineering
trade-offs.
Also, 'modern' chipset (in-design today) will probably be more efficent in
its use of resources (power consumption) than the most chipsets currently
on the market. Its for sure that having your NIC do DMA and then having your
CPU run an ISR is far better (for both power consumption and performance)
than spending CPU cycles performing PIO. Nearly every new 802.11 MAC will have
a PCI (or USB2.0) interface. You can complian that your PDA doesn't have PCI,
but its likely that your next one (Xscale-based) will.
5GHz is going to be a huge revalation and revolution, just as soon as
the crankpots can get over the fact that their current equipment is
the modern variant of a Telebit Trailblazer, still useful, but hardly
a commodity part, or anywhere near cutting edge..
I've said it here before, but it bears stating again, volume drives the
market. The two volume markets for 802.11 today are SOHO and Enterprise.
I believe that Enterprise will choose 802.11a for deployment as soon as
'combo' (802.11b and 802.11a) client adaptors are the norm. Nearly every
'new' chipset development team that I can name of is working on a combo
chipset (and Atheros is shipping).
SOHO is entirely malliable by both "speed and feeds" (faster at the same
price is better) and the adoption of 802.11a by large consumer electronics
firms, as long as it is no more expensive than similar 802.11b solutions.
And I think that will be the case.
And behind it all, you've got Intel, who seems bent on pushing 802.11a as well.
That said, Microsoft seems to want to 'hold back' on 11a.
So, ya, my prediciton is that 802.11a will dominate the earth in less
than 5 years. 802.11b will still be used, but nobody will be buying *new*
products that are 802.11b-only.
First post here. Hope it is not screwed up.
seemed to work.
Jim
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