SAN JOSE, Calif. — Startup ProVision Communications (Bristol, U.K.) is giving customers a sneak peak of its wireless video technology that will debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The company has software and an antenna design based on 802.11n that it claims can deliver video wirelessly throughout a home.
ProVision joins a growing list of competitors in the field. Startup Amimon recently announced a specification from the WHDI Consortium for its version of 5 GHz wireless. Qualcomm and startup Quantenna are among companies preparing aggressive implementations of 802.11n.
Other efforts are jumping to 60 GHz for greater bandwidth. The Wireless Gigabit Association recently announced a specification for a broad range of 60 GHz apps. It competes with the WirelessHD group and chip sets from startup SiBeam focused exclusively on HDMI cable replacement.
The ProVision technology claims it can deliver video at a range of up to 400 years through multiple brick walls and floors. It claims it was able to deliver 38 Mbits/s throughout one demo home in England that had internal brick walls.
The approach uses a 3x3 MIMO antenna design. The company designs its antennas into the back and side of a device as well as along the plane of the device's printed circuit board.
Provision uses a novel video encoding scheme to create packets. It also has its own error correction technology to recover lost packets and an error concealment feature that kicks in if the packet cannot be recovered.
The approach requires both ends of a link use the ProVision technology. It is currently implemented on a standard 802.11n chip set from Metalink that supports a 3x3 antenna array.
"We use a back channel all the time to monitor signal propagation, so if someone opens or closes a door we compensate for it," said Steve Cliffe, recently named as chief executive of ProVision. "If someone opens or closes a door we compensate for it," he said.
The technology was developed by two professors at the University of Bristol, one with a focus on wireless and the other in video.
In the past month, the startup sent out test systems to a handful of potential customers including system makers and service providers. It is now entering licensing talks with some of those companies. ProVision will demonstrate its technology in a suite at the Hilton Hotel at CES.
