The AR9281 single-band (2.4GHz) 1×2 MIMO (1 transmit, 2 receive) PCIe design delivers 300 Mbps PHY rates on the receive side, while providing up to 150 Mbps in transmit. The 1×2 design is, according to Atheros, the lowest cost MIMO configuration able to obtain Wi-Fi Draft 11n certification. The dual-band AR9280 has a 2×2 MIMO design.
Both chips and reference designs support Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS and Linux operating systems. They also include support for WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia), Wi-Fi Protected Setup and Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX).
The Atheros AR9280 and AR9281 solutions are currently sampling to customers and will be in volume production in the first quarter of 2008.