Quantenna fueling battle for home networks

The major push in home networking is spurring innovation in the way wireless technology is deployed, and Quantenna Communications, a three-year-old venture-backed firm based in Silicon Valley is one of the pioneers of chipsets to deliver more bandwidth in the home. Quantenna expects to see its chips’ deployment in commercial products to take off in 2010, according to Behrooz Rezvani, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Quantenna.

The only question, Rezvani said in an interview, is who will use the technology first: companies making equipment for service providers or the consumer electronics industry. Quantenna is talking to potential customers in both camps and expects to see parallel efforts beginning as early as the third quarter of this year, he said.

“There will be a big battle between who is going to own the home,” Rezvani said. “There is a push by the operators who are going to try to own the home because they don’t want to be a dumb pipe. Then you have conglomerate companies like Apple, Sony and HP that still have multimedia telecenters that serve multimedia content and want to distribute it directly. Who is going to own the home? I don’t think we know yet. But it will include wireless providers – 80% of their calls come from home. All of a sudden, the home network becomes pretty critical.”

Quantenna is competing with companies such as Celeno Communications and others in this space and is touting its 4X4 MIMO [multiple input, multiple output] technology and mesh network capabilities. Quantenna has developed a standards-based 802.11n chip set that combines a 4x4 radio transceiver/antenna, dual frequencies in the 2.4 GigaHertz and 5 GHz bands, mesh networking and transmit beam-forming.

This technology enables Quantenna to guarantee sharing of high-definition video and other high-end multimedia traffic throughout even a large home or one exposed to interference, Rezvani said.

“The biggest contribution we have is 4 by 4 plus dynamic beam-forming, which allows beams to get adjusted very quickly and adapt to all the conditions very rapidly,” Rezvani said. “The mesh networking, on top of that, is very helpful. Our two-fold approach has been to increase reliability significantly and add the mesh node on top of the physical layer so you can work around difficult spots in any kind of home configuration.” 

Mesh networking helps distribute the signal more effectively to deal with potential in-home interference, which can include everything from fluorescent lights and home appliances, as well as the need in some world regions to transmit signals through concrete block walls, Rezvani said.  “In Asia, there are highrise buildings right next to each other, and we have to worry about interference from neighbors,” he said. “Past solutions have counted on more power blasting a radio signal from a central point like a residential access gateway. That not only needs a huge amount of power, but the signal fades as you move away from the central location. We can use mesh networking to maintain the strength of the signal.”

Rezvani believes wireless home networking will prove to be superior to wireline options that use the existing coaxial cable wiring (MoCA), the existing home phone lines (HPNA) or the existing power lines because wireless, if made reliable, can be ubiquitous and more easily installed and used.