An emerging multi-streaming modulation technique still under draft development, the proposed IEEE 802.11n amendment adds multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and other new features to the IEEE 802.11-2007 standard. Although the amendment has not been formally adopted by the IEEE, products based on its Draft 2.0 version are already on the market and arriving at Wi-Fi labs for certification testing.

The UNH-IOL’s wireless Pre-Certification programs increase the chances that a device will successfully achieve Wi-Fi certification on the first pass, thus saving the costs associated with debugging and resubmitting the device in multiple certification rounds. The number of devices the lab has pre-certified has grown steadily since it began offering officially recognized pre-certification for Wi-Fi devices in 2004.

For more information about the UNH-IOL’s wireless LAN pre-certification and general interoperability/debugging programs, visit this link.

Four initial member companies have collaborated with UNH-IOL engineers to draft the initial test suites, available for viewing online here:

“We have completed test suites that provide what the founding members told us they needed most - it came down compliance to the IEEE standards clauses for electrical characteristics, startup functionality and auto-negotiation,” said Jon Beckwith, UNH-IOL Backplane Ethernet consortium manager. “We are actively seeking interested parties to help grow our test bed and augment our ability to verify interoperability beyond the founding members - ideally among the full stable of available backplanes, silicon, and chipsets. We are also pursuing standards outside IEEE, such as PICMG, which will be incorporated with growing interest."

Membership in the consortium provides access to the necessary test tools, including an Agilent 20Gig vector network analyzer, Agilent 13 Ghz Real time digital storage ocilloscope (DSO) and Agilent DCA-J, multi-function analyzer for high speed electrical and optical signals with clock recovery and 18 Ghz electrical sampling modules. In addition, members will have access to a Tektronix CSA8000 with 80EO4 electrical sampling module and a LeCroy SDA11000 11 Ghz Real-time DSO along with access to the 10 Gigabit Consortium XAUI backplanes.

Established in 1988, the UNH-IOL provides rigorous collaborative one-on-one standards-conformance and quality assurance testing as well as multi-vendor group tests (often referred to as “plugfests”). The laboratory’s comprehensive, vendor-neutral testing is performed through independent focused interest groups called consortiums, composed of member companies that each pay an annual fee for product testing and add at least one piece of equipment to a shared reference test bed. Member companies often use the UNH-IOL’s detailed, industry-trusted test reports to provide customers with uncompromised third-party product validation.

About the UNH-IOL Founded in 1988, the UNH-IOL is one of the networking industry’s premier third-party proving grounds for developing technologies. Approximately 200 companies use the UNH-IOL's 32,000+ sq. foot facility to extend their development and quality assurance efforts by testing and fine-tuning technologies, protocols and products for multi-vendor interoperability and conformance to standards. For more information, visit HYPERLINK "http://www.iol.unh.edu/"http://www.iol.unh.edu.