Amimon's wireless ambition: Marry WHDI's HD video with WiFi

MANHASSET, NY — The dream of running high-definition video around the home wirelessly is still far from reality in the eyes of both consumers and leaders in the CE industry, as competing wireless video camps continue to alter specs while treading a long road to interoperability.

But Yoav Nissan-Cohen, chairman and CEO of Amimon, has plans to change the status quo by shifting the battleground from "wireless HD video" to "combined wireless HD video and data."

In an interview with EE Times Wednesday (June 17th), Nissan-Cohen said, "Our next step is to develop a wireless network that combines IP-based data and video."

Amimon is a developer of Wireless High-definition Interface (WHDI) technology running at 5GHz frequency band. The company is banking on that 5GHz band feature, as WiFi also operates at 5GHz frequency. The Amimon CEO said, "We use the same radio. We can share many things together."

WiFi is a prevalent wireless technology that has already successfully penetrated many homes.

WiFi, originally designed for data network, is great for wirelessly routing data from an access point. But it lacks the bandwidth to deliver uncompressed video. "The idea of combining WiFi with WHDI resonates with our customers very well," said Nissan-Cohen.

In theory, WHDI can augment WiFi, because it can support delivery of equivalent video data rates of up to 3Gbps (including uncompressed 1080p) in a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band.

It can also deliver equivalent video data rates of up to 1.5Gbps (including uncompressed 1080i and 720p) on a single 20MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, conforming to worldwide 5GHz spectrum regulations. According to Amimon.

WHDI's range is beyond 100 feet, through walls, and latency is less than one millisecond, which could mesh well with that of WiFi.

The Amimon CEO refrained from disclosing details on how his company plans to combine WiFi and WHDI technologies. He said, "We could use a concurrent dual nature of the two wireless technologies, for example. . . but there are a lot of nuances we need to deal with."

Nissan-Cohen believes his company can roll out silicon combining the two wireless technologies before the end of 2010. "We are working with our competitors on this, too," he added.

'Uncompressed' video as a common language for home network

But hang on. Is uncompressed video so critical in the wireless home network scheme? Isn't WiFi already delivering compressed video?

In Nissan-Cohen's mind, that's where the crux of the issue resides in home networking schemes today, including the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA).