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Atheros XSPAN® Technology
Expanding performance. Expanding possibilities.

Atheros offers the most innovative and complete portfolio of 802.11n wireless LAN chipset solutions. The new AR9001 family of chipsets, the second-generation of Atheros’ XSPAN 802.11n technology, builds upon the company’s first-generation XSPAN products – with enhanced performance, higher integration, smaller form factors and lower overall
cost – to meet the needs of the rapidly growing 802.11n market. Like the first-generation XSPAN products, all AR9001 chipsets are compliant to the latest IEEE 802.11n draft specification. 

Atheros’ AR9001 chipsets feature:

Leading Integration that delivers end product cost and form factors
to drive broad market adoption of 802.11n products;

Single- and Dual-Band, and Multiple MIMO Configurations that
enable OEMs to tailor product price/performance for specific
application and market segment requirements;

Rich Media & Peripheral Interfaces that anticipate the requirements
for advanced media networking applications and allow end-product
feature differentiation;

Simple Setup via Atheros’ JumpStart for Wireless, the company’s
simple network configuration software which supports both the PIN
and push-button setup methods complying to the Wi-Fi Protected
Setup specification;

Worldwide 5 GHz Full-Spectrum Support for state-of-regulatory
requirements with Atheros’ Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS).

Product Overview

Both the AR9001AP-2NX and AR9001AP-3NX solutions incorporate all of the key components needed to build the most cost-effective, dual-band configurable AP/routers for home, carrier/gateway and enterprise applications. These solutions feature the industry’s first 802.11n System-on-Chip (SoC), with the high-performance combination of Atheros’ 400 MHz wireless network processor (WNPU) and Atheros’ market-proven MAC/Baseband. This powerful SoC, which readily supports advanced 11n applications while delivering processing headroom, is paired with Atheros’ second-generation, enhanced dual-configurable 2x2 and 3x3 single-chip radios, featuring XSPAN and XSPAN with SST performance.

These dual-band configurable designs offer customers as well as end-users the ability to select operation of end-products for either the 2.4 or 5 GHz bands of 802.11n

• AR9001AP-2NX: 2x2 MIMO, Fast Ethernet LAN/WAN
• AR9001AP-3NX: 3x3 MIMO, Gigabit Ethernet LAN/WAN

Solution Highlights

• Next-generation, high-performance 802.11n draft compliant wireless
  access point and router chipset solutions including:
  
  AR9001AP-2NX
  - AR9130: 400 MHz Wireless Network Processing Unit (WNPU),
  802.11n MAC/Baseband, Fast Ethernet MACs, 2x2 MIMO
  - AR9104: Dual-band 2x2 MIMO 802.11n Radio
  
  AR9001AP-3NX
  - AR9132: 400 MHz Wireless Network Processing Unit (WNPU), 802.11n
  MAC/Baseband, Gigabit Ethernet MACs, 3x3 MIMO
  - AR9106: Dual-band 3x3 MIMO 802.11n Radio
   
• Full support for Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) enabling
  uncompromised operation in the broad range of 5 GHz channels
• Atheros XSPAN with SST technology – providing the industry’s highest
  TCP/IP throughput at enhanced range
• Support for 2x2 or 3x3 MIMO with spatial multiplexing
• Enables bandwidth of 300 Mbps PHY/link rate – six times the bandwidth
  of 802.11g or 802.11a
• Dual-band WLAN radios operate from 2.300 to 2.500 GHz or
  4.9 to 5.925 GHz
• Compliant with IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11d, 802.11e,
  802.11h, 802.11i, 802.11j, draft 802.11n
• Lead-free RoHS compliant