Eta Devices, Inc. today announced that ETAdvanced is now available for 802.11ac bringing the benefits of the world's most efficient power amplifier technology to WiFi networks. The announcement follows Eta Devices' introduction of ETAdvanced for LTE in February at the Mobile World Congress. The WiFi solution announced today includes the Eta6 power management chip together with reference designs for smartphones.
"Eta6 is truly a game-changing innovation for the mobile industry," said Gene Tkachenko, executive vice president at Eta Devices. "A state-of-the-art 802.11ac power amplifier (PA) controlled by ETAdvanced consumes 80% less power than a typically deployed 802.11ac PA; this is no small feat. ETAdvanced also supports channel bandwidth up to 160 MHz, by far exceeding the capabilities of existing technologies. ETAdvanced is the first time that an advanced supply modulation technology has been demonstrated for ultra high bandwidth applications."
802.11ac is the next-generation WiFi standard that operates on the less crowded 5GHz band, so it provides a more robust wireless signal and makes throughput faster because it can support speeds over 1Gbps. For phone users, 802.11ac means improved performance with tasks such as streaming and sharing data between devices in a home network, and better coverage receiving Wi-Fi in places that may have been dead zones with legacy phones.
ETAdvanced significantly reduces power consumption, resulting in less need for heat dissipation which can help wearable designers optimize for customer experience rather than engineering considerations. In addition to providing significant power savings, the Eta6 power management chip is also a fraction of the size of previous power management technologies including envelope tracking. This is important for both smartphones and the emerging field of wearable electronics where the small form factor of the devices puts space at a premium.
"ETAdvanced solves the power challenges for smartphones and wearables running 802.11ac and/or LTE," said Mattias Astrom, CEO and co-founder of Eta Devices. "ETAdvanced solves all of these issues in one go, extending battery life while reducing heat dissipation which vastly improves the customer experience. And we do this while saving footprint in the device at the same time as we support MIMO and ultrawideband channels of up to 160 MHz. No other efficiency enhancing technology comes even close to delivering these benefits."
