Bangalore, January 5, 2012: The Consumer Electronics Show that opens this week in Las Vegas ( USA) is expected to see a spate of product and solution announcements harbessing the new WiFi standard 802.11ac, that the industry has already dubbed 5G or fifth generation WiFi. Ahead of the formal ratification of the standard by IEEE and the WiFi Alliance, device and product manufacturers are likely to showcase their offerings which will give users gigabit speeds without wires.
 
One of the first off the mark, is Broadcom, a leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, which has already introduced its first family of 802.11ac (5G WiFi) chips designed for a broad range of product segments. The new IEEE 802.11ac chips are three times faster and up to six times more power efficient than equivalent 802.11n solutions.The increased speed of 5G WiFi allows consumers to load web content on a mobile device faster, synch large video or music files quickly, all the while extending battery life and addressing the growing need for a more robust and efficient wireless network.
Broadcom’s family of 5G WiFi solutions includes the BCM4360, BCM4352, BCM43526 and BCM43516. All 5G WiFi solutions from Broadcom support the following features:
80 MHz channel bandwidth that is 2 times wider than current 802.11n solutions; 256-QAM, a higher modulation scheme that increases data transfer efficiency;Transmit and receive beamforming;Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) Codes and Space-Time Block Codes (STBC).
Broadcom is sampling 5G WiFi solutions to its early access partners including retail and PC OEMs, service providers and carriers, and will be demonstrating 5G WiFi capabilities at CES.
Their partners  who can be expected to make their own CES announcements, include Comcast, Lenovo, Motorola, Netgear and Huawei.
Link to IndiaTechOnline's earlier 802.11 story: http://www.indiatechonline.com/802.11ac-642.php  
Link to 5G Wifi industry page: www.5gwifi.org  
Netgear, another early mover in 802.11 ac has created a nice explanatory video: We feature it for a few days in our Tech Video slot on the home page