Broadcom has announced four new 802.11n products

The new BCM4323 802. 11n, according to Broadcom, is the world’s first single-chip dual-band 802.11n solution for USB adapters. A part Broadcom’s Intensi-fi XLR WLAN family, the BCM4323 enables very small and cost effective USB adapters that consumers can use to connect to PCs, TVs, set-top boxes, personal video recorders, and other devices to a Wi-Fi network. The company’s new Accelerange technology also features in the new dual-band chip and enables transfer of HD content between devices.

Annual shipments of Wi-Fi USB adapters – otherwise known as dongles – will reach 15 million by 2001, according to ABI Research. The majority of these will be dual-band 802.11n adapters as more and more consumers use the 5 GHz portion on their Wi-Fi networks for video streaming and VoIP calls.

The Broadcom BCM4323 USB solution was designed using 65 nanometer CMOS technology. This enables 20mm x 52mm USB modules that are half the size of those built with multi-chip solutions.

Another feature of the BCM4323 is an integrated ARM processor and on-chip RAM that can offload wireless functions from the host processor in consumer devices, which should help manufacturers to easily embed dual-band 802.11n capabilities directly into multimedia products, such as digital TVs, set-top boxes and DVD players.

Also released to day are a new line of 802.11n router chips, the BCM4716, BCM4717 and BCM4718. These chips use two-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs) which brings down the cost of manufacturing high-end routers.

Like all of Broadcoms other Wi-Fi products, the new router solutions use OneDriver software. This provides support for Linux, VxWorks and NetBSD operating systems and is Microsoft Vista Basic/Premium certified.

The BCM4716 integrates a 300MHz CPU architecture to provide the optimal balance of performance and cost for basic WLAN routers that connect to Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet networks.

The BCM4717 provides dual-band (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) capabilities in a small form factor for WLAN routers, access points, set-top boxes, and digital televisions. It also integrates a 300 MHz CPU and offers options for Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet PHYs.

The BCM4718 integrates a 533MHz CPU with high-performance memory architecture to push the limits of simultaneous dual-band performance for high-end Gigabit Ethernet routers, and features USB host ports to support media storage routers.