GainSpan Embedded WiFi Technology

The things we do to make Wi-Fi simpler, lower power – just more cost-effective

As a wireless innovator, we get a lot of questions about Wi-Fi technology. One of the most often asked is "Why Wi-Fi?"

For us the answer is simple. Wi-Fi has rapidly gone the way of electricity. We depend on it so much to do so many things and many times we don't even know it is there. Just as electricity powers our world, Wi-Fi powers the new frontier - a limitless frontier where worlds connect.

Today, over two billion Wi-Fi devices are on the market. Industry forecasts expect more than 770 million Wi-Fi chipsets to ship this year, with one billion units expected to ship in 2011. One out of every 10 people in the world uses Wi-Fi. 70% of US homes have broadband and 70% of broadband modems have Wi-Fi. Over 45% of smartphones have Wi-Fi and that number is growing every day. Wi-Fi is going into our homes in TV's, thermostats, dishwashers, refrigerators and the like. It's everywhere.

To us, it made sense to leverage this ubiquitous Wi-Fi infrastructure and take advantage of the many benefits of a well-established protocol.

Add Wi-Fi to existing embedded devices

Adding Wi-Fi has always been looked upon as a rather difficult and time-consuming job. No longer.

Through its hardware and software solution offering, GainSpan Wi-Fi technology eliminates the complexity of conventional Wi-Fi deployments. Our embedded Wi-Fi is designed to make it quick, easy and cost effective to add Wi-Fi to products.

GainSpan embedded Wi-Fi is architected unlike any other on the market. Our solutions simplify and accelerate the process of adding Wi-Fi to devices by offloading high-level Wi-Fi services from any 8-32bits microcontroller. We do this with the use of a secondary "network" processor.

And because we make it quick and easy to add Wi-Fi, we can reduce time to market and save considerable costs.

The GainSpan All-In-One solution integrates Wi-Fi, IP functionality, and Serial-to-Wi-Fi functionality. In addition, GainSpan is developing application profiles such as the Smart Energy Profile (SEP 2.0) developed by the ZigBee Alliance. Adding Wi-Fi using our All-in-One solution requires minimal networking knowledge. It allows designers to take the solution out-of-the box and bring up a Wi-Fi connected prototype in as little as a few hours.

Wi-Fi modules optimized for battery-powered applications

The single biggest complaint we hear, bar none, is that Wi-Fi consumes too much power.

GainSpan ultra low power Wi-Fi solves this problem – once and for all. We were the first to optimize power consumption of Wi-Fi chips and apply advanced power management techniques to target long battery life applications. GainSpan low power Wi-Fi eliminates the power consumption issues of conventional Wi-Fi. The result? Wi-Fi that uses so little power it can run for years on a standard battery.

So just how is Low Power Wi-Fi different?

Conventional high power Wi-Fi chips are optimized for fast response, low latency, and high data rates. But our low power Wi-Fi chips are optimized for low power consumption, particularly when the device is in Standby mode.

How do we accomplish this? In conventional Wi-Fi the device may actively listen to the channel even when no data is being transmitted, to provide good response and low latency. But low power Wi-Fi minimizes power consumption when data is not being transferred. After an initial startup, a low-power device spends the great majority of its time doing nothing. That's right, nothing. The device only wakes up periodically to support various application-related or network-related tasks. Even when it's "awake," the device is actually sending or receiving data for only a few milliseconds.

Wi-Fi had all been written off as a viable technology for many applications because it was so power hungry - until the advent of ultra low power Wi-Fi from GainSpan.

Easy Provisioning: Connect Embedded Devices to the Internet

Wi-Fi provisioning has been another bone of contention over the years. Well, we've changed that with a set of comprehensive provisioning options for Wi-Fi connectivity.

We offer ad hoc or infrastructure modes, Wi-Fi Protected Set-up (WPS), or custom applications for maximum deployment flexibility. We provide all the software and hardware interfaces so that you can use the appropriate method.

With WPS, provisioning is as simple as pushing a button or entering a pin code to automate sense, association and authentication to an Access Point (AP).

In Ad hoc mode, where there is no AP, provisioning is via embedded web server and a browser on a laptop or Smart Phone for SSID, DHCP, DNS and security configuration. In infrastructure mode, configuration is handled with a management application via SNMP and scales to hundreds of devices.

Our embedded Wi-Fi can also be easily provisioned through a USB, serial or Ethernet interface connected to a host computer.