Consumer giants rally around Wi-Fi variant

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Startup Amimon has rallied five consumer giants behind its variation of an 802.11n home network that it claims can carry uncompressed high-definition video an average of 100 meters. The resulting Wireless Home Digital Interface special interest group will define by the end of the year an ad hoc standard based on an update of the Amimon technology.

Hitachi Ltd., Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp. and Sony Corp. have become promoter-level members of the new group. A spokesman for Amimon (Santa Clara, Calif.) said the startup will ship a second-generation chip set compliant with the new spec about the time the spec is released.

The WHDI technology competes with a handful of other approaches pursuing similar applications using ultrawideband, 60-GHz radios and other twists on 802.11, some of them backed by similar consortia.

One of the closest competitors, startup SiBeam, has gathered LG, Matsushita, NEC, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba behind its 60-GHz technology that aims to carry uncompressed high def video up to about 10 meters. The WirelessHD group has already launched its spec. 

Click here to read Rick Merritt's full story via EETimes.