To give a boost to the budding broadband wireless market and help promote the interoperability and certification of broadband wireless products based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, Atmel Corp. has joined the WiMAX Forum as a principal member. As an experienced manufacturer of advanced wireless semiconductors, Atmel believes it can play an important role in the design, production and marketing of silicon to be used in WiMAX Forum Certified applications for this key emerging market.

Frank Draper, director of membership at the WiMAX Forum, said, "Atmel will be a significant contributor to the WiMAX Forum, bringing their vast experience as a wireless IC manufacturer and their unique ability to offer complete out-of-the-box solutions."

Meanwhile, the WiMAX Forum is striving to create economies of scale by promoting standards-based, interoperable products that will drive price and performance levels not achievable by proprietary approaches. The WiMAX technology is designed to help service providers across global markets deliver economical broadband data, voice and video services to both residential and business customers. Chris Baumann, Atmel's wireless business unit director stated, "We believe WiMAX will be one of the key wireless markets allowing significant improvement to broadband connectivity for residential and small businesses.”

In an effort to create a regulatory environment favorable to the widespread global deployment of WiMAX Forum Certified systems, the WiMAX Forum in June established a regulatory working group (RWG). The aim of the RWG is to ensure availability and global harmonization of WiMAX friendly spectrum worldwide, as it combines the efforts of more than 100 members to present a unified and consistent message when meeting with regulators around the world. Additionally, the WiMAX Forum RWG plans to ensure the availability of licensed and license-exempt spectrum by encouraging the worldwide, uniform adoption of specific frequency bands for broadband wireless access (BWA).

According to Atmel, the supplier shipped more than 100 million wireless chips last year and intends to continue to focus on this burgeoning market by adding broadband wireless products to its portfolio. Atmel announced earlier this year that it is working with Wavesat, a developer of OFDM Broadband Wireless (BW) silicon solutions, to bring the first WiMAX compliant PHY chips to market.

As the WiMAX membership grows and the technology gears to begin certification and interoperability testing later in the year in conformance to IEEE 802.16a, WiMAX is getting ready to deliver broadband on a widescale, according to a market study compiled by Visant Strategies based in Kings Park, N.Y. (See “WiMAX Could be Next Step After WiFi, RF Design, July 2004, p. 12.)

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