Wi-Fi Alliance Selects Marvell’s Avastar 802.11ac 2x2 Combo Solution with NFC and Bluetooth for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac Test Suite

Marvell's strong track record of consistently delivering robust, highly-integrated, breakthrough wireless solutions—which include the latest advancements such as 802.11ac, mobile multiple input multiple output, near field communications, FM, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint — have successfully empowered leading service providers and top-tier enterprise and consumer manufacturers around the world. The Avastar 88W8897 – which pairs today's most cutting-edge technology to bring superior wireless performance to Chrome, Windows and Android ultrabooks, tablets, gaming consoles and smart TVs – is now in production, with consumer electronics featuring Avastar expected by the 2013 holiday season.

Today's 'Connected Lifestyle' consumers have developed a growing appetite for media-rich entertainment and already set high standards of user experience for productivity and communications. High-performance and throughput, range and robust Wi-Fi connectivity are the very key to this experience. We are very proud to deliver the industry's first 802.11ac 2x2 combo solution to the end-to-end market, empowering today's most advanced enterprise access points, mobile and imaging devices, gaming consoles, in-vehicle infotainment systems, Smart TVs and Smart homes, said Weili Dai, Co-Founder of Marvell. I believe the mass adoption of Marvell's low-power wireless SoCs across a variety of end-markets underscores the versatility, robustness and reliability of our product line and highlights the growing demand for seamless connectivity across the globe. I am proud of our development teams that worked on this product and the greater efforts involved in achieving this certification.

The Avastar 88W8897 is the only 802.11ac 2x2 combo radio solution currently available on the market. The low-power, dual-band (2.4/5 GHz) IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 combo is specifically designed to support the reliability and quality requirements of next-generation, Very High Throughput WLAN products. The 88W8897 is also the only chip that increases throughput with 802.11ac technology while simultaneously leveraging NFC to enable simple tap-and-go wireless capabilities. Additionally, the 88W8897 offers the highest level of integration available, including dual-band power amplifiers and power management, resulting in significant RBOM and footprint reduction from comparable solutions.

When paired with tablets and ultrabooks, the 88W8897 is designed to enable an Always On, Always Connected wireless experience, keeping e-mail, social media and digital content up-to-date even when a device is in standby mode – a capability lacking in legacy mobile computing products. By coupling Marvell's full Wi-Fi offload solution with Windows 8 features such as Wake On Wireless functionality and Connected Standby, the Avastar 88W8897 is expected to meet the demands of today's connected consumer and deliver the AOAC computing experience.

The Avastar 88W8897 offers a complete ac solution with support of all mandatory Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac features and as well as the following optional features:

-Low-density parity-check transmission and reception
-256 quadrature amplitude modulation transmission and reception (MCS8 and MCS9 rates)
-Market-proven implicit and explicit beamforming support
-Space-time block coding transmission and reception
-Ability to receive A-MPDU with just A-MSDU
-Short guard interval for 80MHz operation

“We congratulate Marvell on achieving selection to the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac test suite, said Wi-Fi Alliance president and CEO Edgar Figueroa. Marvell has been instrumental in the development of our industry-wide certification program.