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by jason mcdonald, senior editor | read other blog posts

Ubiquity is the state of being everywhere at once (or seeming to be everywhere at once); in the world of embedded systems, Wi-Fi or 802.11 has become ubiquitous. It may not be the best standard - certainly not the most power efficient, but its ubiquity may make it an amazing choice for your next embedded systems wireless application. Here is a news round up of the 802.11 / Wi-Fi for embedded world.

contents of this post:

1. The Genius of Devicescape and its Wi-Fi Survey
2. Embedded Wi-Fi News - Market Leaders in Embedded 802.11 Technology Enablement
3. Best Web Resources for Embedded Wi-Fi / Embedded 802.11
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The Genius of Devicescape and its Wi-Fi Survey

If you haven't paid attention to Devicescape, you should as the company is a leader in innovative Wi-Fi technology. Their profoundly innovative Wi-Fi big idea: leveraging the ubiquity of Wi-Fi to harness it for location-based services. Wi-Fi, as opposed to more traditional GPS methods, provides coverage where people are (think: Wi-Fi hotspots at airports, convention centers, downtown L.A.) and at a finer granularity than traditional GPS.

Devicescape utilizes a freemium business model, with a twist. It gives away its easy Wi-Fi product, which locates available hot spots and allows a seamless transition for users. The company then leverages this information to enable location-based services, sold to manufacturers worldwide. Consumers get a free Wi-Fi locator service; OEM manufacturers can enable their devices to be location aware, much more efficiently than competing GPS-based models.

Even better, Devicescape has just concluded their Wi-Fi survey. A theme of this year's survey: sharing. As social networks like Facebook become the go-to application for mobile phones and wireless devices, enabling easy sharing becomes a market differentiator. For example, Ninety-eight percent of respondents want WiFi built into their laptops; 94.7 percent expect it to be built into their cell phones. Growing numbers want WiFi built into their gaming devices (68.4 percent) and digital cameras (54.1 percent).

More details, here and the full survey, here .

Embedded Wi-Fi News - Market Leaders in Embedded 802.11 Technology Enablement

Among semiconductor companies, Microchip is a leader in helping smaller OEM's deploy Wi-Fi enabled embedded systems applications. In June, for example, the company announced its next-generation, agency-certified MRF24WB0MA/MB embedded Wi-Fi® transceiver modules. The IEEE 802.11 module firmware has an easy-to-use API driver interface to Microchip's free TCP/IP Protocol stack and 8-, 16- or 32-bit PIC® microcontrollers. "Wi-Fi is quickly becoming the preferred standard for adding remote Internet access to embedded products," said Steve Caldwell, director of Microchip's RF Products Division. "The combination of our next-generation Wi-Fi transceiver module and TCP/IP stack provides an industry-leading platform for designers to Wi-Fi enable their monitoring and control products." (Details, here ).

Among small companies, GainSpan also helps developers easily deploy Wi-Fi enabled devices. In August, GainSpan announced the launch of its family of All-in-One GS1011M Wi-Fi modules that makes it quick, easy and cost effective for embedded device and appliance manufacturers to add Wi-Fi to their products. The new modules hope to significantly shorten hardware and software development time and reduce the complexity typically associated with adding Wi-Fi to embedded applications. (Details, here ).

Finally, one of the more interesting recent innovations in Wi-Fi is Wi-Fi Direct, which allows peer-to-peer networking and device discovery. CSR released their CSR9100™ connectivity platform which is designed to meet the requirements of the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Direct certification as well as support for the latest Bluetooth standards. With support for Bluetooth, Bluetooth low energy, and HD Voice (Wideband Speech) as well as Wi-Fi Direct, the CSR9100 product range is now uniquely positioned to address a broad range of customer needs. (Details, here

Best Web Resources for Embedded Wi-Fi / Embedded 802.11

The Wi-Fi Alliance ( http://www.wi-fi.org/ ) is the premier destination for technical information on everything Wi-Fi. Unfortunately much of their information focuses on the consumer marketplace, but they do have discussions on Wi-Fi enabled smart phones, for example. They sell their standards to the public, as well.

An alternative source of information is the IEEE standards on 802.11 at http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/ . This is more standards-for-standards information, but is the source of the 802.11 standards.

Beyond that, eg3.com monitors the 802.11 / Wi-Fi world with a focus on embedded systems news at http://www.eg3.com/802.11.htm .

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Express Logic develops, markets and supports the ThreadX® real-time operating system (RTOS), NetX™TCP/IP networking stack, USBX™ USB stack, FileX® embedded file system, and PEGX™ GUI toolkit for embedded applications. ThreadX is a royalty-free, full source code, small-footprint, low-overhead RTOS that is extremely easy to learn and use. ThreadX is one of the most widely deployed RTOS products in the world, with over 1.25 billion products based on ThreadX.