The Enhanced Wireless Consortium is a coalition formed by twenty seven by 2005 Wi-Fi industry players to accelerate the process of IEEE 802.11n standard development and promotion of a technology for the future generation wireless local area networking products and devices. This process was to be done by developing a specification with other industry player support and try to speed the ratification of an 802.11n standard. The objective of the Enhanced Wireless Consortium was to enable the interoperability of WLAN products among other advantages for the consumers. Another purpose was to increase the efficiency of wireless networks and performance in general before of the 802.11n standard ratification.
The Enhanced Wireless Consortium specification defines the technologies that are used in PC and networking equipments and a wide range of other mobile electronic application devices. The demand for higher speeds is the main objective for networking applications and related connections. The consortium designed its specifications to be able to support very high speeds of up to 600 Megabytes per minute. This is also the consideration of including other more advanced technologies such as Space Time Block Coding (STBC). This would make systems become able to deliver or transmit a wider range of wireless networked products.
Some of the members of the Enhanced Wireless Consortium are Apple, Azimuth, Atheros, Airoha, Broadcom, Buffallo, Conextant, Cisco Systems, D-Link, Intel Corporation, Lenovo, LitePoint, Marvell, NETGEAR, SANYO, Symbol Technologies, Sony, Toshiba, Winbond and many others. The coalition was formed back in 2005 and by now several other members have joined.
Some of the technical highlights of the Enhanced Wireless Consortium specifications are as follows; a mixed-mode interoperability with 802.11a/b/g networks which would in return enhance a wireless connection while still keeping the communication possible. PHY transmissions rates of up to 600Mbps which would enable high data transfer rates and still maintain the battery power by taking shorter to transfer the data. Other technical specifications include use of 2.4GHz or 5GHz unlicensed bands which actually matches the frequency plan for the already existing 802.11 electronic devices. The consortiums website is however seemingly in active for a while now and so are the consortium activities.