Representatives of companies participating in the HiperLAN 2 launch said that the standard, currently a work in progress at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), should be completed this year. The first HiperLAN 2-compliant products should become available in volume in 2002.

The group of six founding companies — Bosch, Dell Computer, LM Ericsson, Nokia, Telia and Texas Instruments — presented HiperLAN 2 as part of a wireless hierarchy that would include the short-range 1-Mbit/second Bluetooth as a "personal" wireless network, with HiperLAN 2 as the broadband wireless access network supported by 3G mobile communications.

HiperLAN 2 is designed to operate in the license-free 5-GHz band, so buildings such as airports and hotels could provide access points. But it is also expected that mobile cellular service operators may provide access points to improve the data reception of suitably equipped 3G terminals.

Vesa Wallden, vice president of sales and marketing at Nokia Wireless Business Communications (Tampere, Finland), who serves as the United Kingdom's chairman of H2GF, said the completed standard would include a definition of interoperation with 3G cellular networks. "Within a HiperLAN 2 coverage area you will get high-bandwidth voice, data and video, but if you leave the coverage area you can drop down to cellular communications," he said.

Single air interface

The multifaceted 3G air interface will operate in the licensed part of the 2-GHz spectrum. It is intended to provide data rates of up to 2 Mbits/s, although the rate likely will be 384 kbits/s for moving terminals.

Wallden also stressed that in addition to providing much higher data rates than either Bluetooth or 3G, HiperLAN would provide a single global air interface. He admitted, however, that its use alongside 3G communications would mean designing multiradio, multimode terminals. "HiperLAN 2 really promotes global roaming because whether you are in Helsinki, London or Tokyo, it's one global standard," he said.

Wallden also said quality of service shouldn't be a problem. "For multimedia and video you can't tolerate delays. HiperLAN 2 will provide smooth transmission to laptops, PDAs and smart phones."

The H2GF members were less clear on how much silicon die area or power budget a HiperLAN 2 interface would require in terminal equipment. Terminals would have to be equipped with multiple radio interfaces to obtain the full benefit of wireless data, and transmission power levels are in the range 200 mW to 1 W.

Wallden noted, however, that "the wireless LAN is no more expensive than wireline connectivity. It HiperLAN 2 will be competitive in pricing."

"It's hard to say what level of integration will be reached but there are already promising technologies in the RF area," said Leon Chicheportiche, European marketing director at Texas Instruments' wireless communications business unit. "Obviously, Texas Instruments has great experience in providing baseband and DSP circuits, but TI is investigating the RF quite a lot. We are working on silicon germanium, RF BiCMOS and even RF CMOS up to 5 GHz. We are working toward a schedule of offering pretty concrete HiperLAN 2 solutions in 2000."

At the Atlanta launch, Martin Johnsson, chairman of the HiperLAN2 Global Forum and a product manager for wireless LANs at LM Ericsson, said the connection-oriented standard could coexist in U.S. applications with the 5-GHz IEEE 802.11a standard, since frequency-band windows are large. But sharing packets between the connectionless 802.11a and connection-oriented HiperLAN2 would be problematic. No direct point-to-point packet sharing would be likely; instead, Johnsson said, users would need to adopt yet another type of dual-mode device to support both wireless standards.

Vaughn Watts, a Dell fellow and developer within the personal systems group of Dell Computer, said that PC manufacturers would appreciate the complementary nature of HiperLAN2 and Bluetooth.

At a separate launch in London, representatives of the founding companies declined to explain why such companies as NTT, Lucent and Motorola, all represented in the ETSI Broadband Radio Access Network (BRAN) standards committees working on the standard, had been omitted from the founding group.

"The HiperLAN 2 Global Forum is an open organization," said Henrik Abromowicz, general manager of wireless LAN systems at Ericsson Radio Systems AB (Stockholm). "We are inviting them to join now."

Apart from promoting the uptake of HiperLAN 2, the forum said its main task is to provide interoperability conformance testing.

"The existence of a standard alone does not guarantee interoperability. The Global Forum will make sure products to be shipped will be interoperable," Wallden said.

Ericsson's Abramowicz added: "We will select a laboratory where interoperability testing can be done."