Quantenna, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, unveiled its line of 802.11n chipsets featuring 4×4 MIMO and transmit (Tx) beam forming technology for delivering guaranteed wireless bandwidth of up to 1 Gbps anywhere within a home.
In Quantenna’s design, a single home access point (AP) would communicate via multiple links to relay nodes plugged into electrical outlets throughout the home. Multiple paths would automatically be created and dynamically maintained from the AP to other client devices, such as IPTV set-top boxes, located anywhere in the house.
Quantenna’s silicon leverages a unique architecture that combines MIMO with two or four concurrent bands to enable highly-reliable connections around potential dead zones in a home wireless environment. The design uses adaptive vector mesh routing to work around areas of poor coverage and signal interference. Beamforming technology enables the chip to locate receiving devices and focus the signal on them, improving range and data rate while conserving transmitter power. The concurrent dual band mode could be used for real-time video transmission via the 5 Ghz band and data could travel over the 2.4 Ghz band. Furthermore, the design integrates high efficiency power amplifiers (PAs) with 18 dBm output power along with low-noise amplifier (LNA), video graphics array (VGA), switches, baluns and diplexers that constitute a front-end module.
Quantenna’s family of wireless solutions includes a several devices:
- QHS1000: A fully integrated chipset solution with up to 1 Gbps performance. It is available as a dual 4×4 or quad 2×2 and operates on both the 2.4 and 5 GHz spectrums concurrently.
- QHS600: A fully integrated single chip solution with up to 600 Mbps link speed. The chip is available as single 4×4 or dual 2×2 and operates on the less crowded 5 GHz spectrum for
bandwidth-intensive applications such as video. - QHS450: A fully integrated single chip solution with up to 450 Mbps link speed. It is available as single 4×4 or dual 2×2 and operates on 2.4 GHz spectrum for data-intensive applications.
- Quantenna OS: A full-featured access point operating software that runs on the Quantenna family of products. Quantenna also enables equipment vendors to port their own software features on to Quantenna chipsets to further reduce BOM cost.
- Quantenna Plug: A fully functional, small form factor access point that plugs directly into an electrical outlet. The Quantenna plug features an integrated mesh network element that acts as a reference system. It comes with a development kit that includes schematics, Gerber files and the BOM, and uses the QHS 1000 silicon and the Quantenna OS.
- Quantenna was founded in 2006 and has received more than $27 million in Series A and B funding. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Venrock Associates, Sigma Partners and Grazia Equity.
- Quantenna’s management team includes Dr. Behrooz Rezvani (founder, chairman and chief executive officer) and Dr. Andrea Goldsmith (co-founder and chief technology officer.) Prior to founding Quantenna, Dr. Rezvani founded Ikanos Communications in 1999 and served as chief technology officer through its successful IPO in 2005. Dr. Goldsmith is also a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and a recognized expert in the field of wireless communications and networks, with an emphasis on MIMO systems, adaptive transmission, and QoS for wireless applications. Her prior experience includes both academic and industry positions with the California Institute of Technology, Memorylink Corporation (where she was chief scientist), AT&T Bell Laboratories and Maxim Technologies.