Wifi Revolution

Cambridge headquartered CSR (News - Alert), a provider of personal wireless technology, announced that its UniFi WiFi technology has been selected by Canary Wireless for its second generation Digital Hotspotter Model HS20.

 

Canary Wireless, a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Mobile Systems, is a privately-held Chicago based company that offers innovative wireless products to business travelers, students and other consumers worldwide.

 

Owing to its thorough understanding of emerging wireless technologies, Canary Wireless saw a great success with its first commercially-available product, an LCD WiFi (News - Alert) detector called the Digital Hotspotter Model HS10. Following this success, the company has built this new model HS20 which is able to detect an even better range of WiFi signals and network properties.

 

The HS20 called for a compact, low power WLAN chip with a simple-to-use API (application programming interface). CSR's UniFi single-chip WiFi will enable Canary Wireless to create a device that is attractive, efficient, responsive and highly versatile.

 

Raj Gawera, Head of Marketing for CSR's WiFi Strategic Business Unit said that the company is pleased to work with Canary Wireless and develop a good working relationship with them. 

 

Gawera also mentioned that UniFi fitted well with Canary's needs as CSR designed UniFi to ensure minimal time-to-market, taking as much hassle away from original equipment manufacturer (OEM) as possible.

 

CSR's UniFi solution is very easy to integrate and has extremely low power consumption, using just an average of about 10mW. UniFi's 88-ball chip scale package (CSP (News - Alert)) measures just 5.8mm x 6.4mm and has excellent radio coexistence, while dual RISC microcontrollers and quadruple QoS packet queues reduce the load on the host processor.

 

The HS20 is able to detect 802.11 b, g and n; (Wireless networking standards) scans on 14 channels and can display information on up to 20 wireless networks without interference from Bluetooth signals, cordless phone signals, etc.

 

By pushing a 'scan' button the HS20 will gather the ID (SSID) and signal strength of all networks around it. The HS20 can even display information on the encryption status of a Wi-Fi network; open or secure, WEP, WPA or WPA2.

 

Steve Deutscher, President, Canary Wireless commented that with UniFi the company has been able to make the HS20 slimline and powerful, yet with a battery life of about three months from two ordinary AAA batteries.

 

 

 

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