802.11 family shrinks and adds USB

-- EDN, 4/13/2000

Intersil has announced several additions to its Prism wireless-LAN family, which supports the 11-Mbps 802.11 standard. The new HFA3861B (picture) baseband processor offers a short-preamble option; improved multipath-delay-spread tolerance for operation in dense environments; and a Rake receiver, reducing interference and increasing effective range. The HFA3861B, a drop-in replacement for the HFA3861A, comes with a firmware upgrade. Expanding the connectivity of the Prism family, the HFA3842 media-access controller (MAC) comes with Universal Serial Bus (USB)- and PC-card host interfaces. The device operates at 11 Mbps; supports fallback rates of 5.5, 2, and 1 Mbps; and is a pin-for-pin replacement for the HFA3841. Intersil also offers the ICW3870 baseband processor/MAC, an integrated version of the HFA3861B and HFA3841, thus reducing the Prism II from five chips to four.

The HFA3861B is available in production quantities for $11.57 (10,000). The HFA3842 is available for sampling, and production is scheduled for midyear at $14.30 (10,000). Samples of the ICW3870 will be available the second quarter, and volume production is slated for early in the third quarter for $19.80 (10,000).

Intersil,www.intersil.com/prism.

-by Nicholas Cravotta