As chips are becoming smaller and more powerful, the wireless audio market is continuing to rapidly grow. According to MarketsandMarkets, the wireless audio industry is expected to reach $54.07 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 23.2 percent between 2016 and 2022. High performance, low power wireless and Bluetooth/ Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) solutions have been key enablers of the growth of wireless audio, providing the technology for companies to develop connected audio solutions that have the throughput and range needed for high-resolution wireless, integrated with the extended battery life consumers expect for portable devices.

Multi-channel and multi-room wireless audio solutions are two key trends that have seen an increase in consumer adoption. However, to enable consumers to seamlessly stream their favorite tunes throughout their homes, there are a few key technological challenges with range and synchronization that must be addressed.

Marvell’s newest Avastar® wireless connectivity solutions make range limitations a thing of the past for many home and enterprise audio applications. Marvell’s high performance and low power Avastar combos incorporate Dynamic Multi-Hop Relay (DMHR) Technology to connect up to 15 devices in a daisy-chain fashion, extending the range of traditional Wi-Fi networks 15 times from 40m to almost 600m in a typical home. Additionally, Marvell has enabled other exciting features, such as connecting up to 31 clients to a speaker or sound bar which acts as a soft access point.

Diagram showing a daisy-chain wireless audio setup

To make every microsecond of audio count, Marvell’s Avastar solutions provide cutting-edge audio synchronization across devices and rooms. Combining Marvell’s advanced Wi-Fi technology, support for the 802.11mc standard, and hardware time-stamping synchronization algorithms developed by our partners, Avastar delivers best-in-class smart connected solutions.

Another key trend in the wireless audio space, is the emergence of voice assisted products like Amazon Echo and Google Home. Marvell is working closely with all voice-enabled ecosystems to be at the forefront of technology enablement for this new category of products.

From portable speakers to advanced soundbar systems, Marvell’s advanced wireless technology is embedded in many of the most popular audio products on the market today. To learn more about Marvell’s wireless solutions, please visit: www.marvell.com/wireless. You can also read more about wireless trends and standards in my Q&A with Electronic Design’s Bill Wong http://electronicdesign.com/wifi/qa-what-s-new-wireless-audio-market.

Have you ever been in a situation where you went out with your family or group of friends/colleagues to a crowded venue (think picnic, movies, trade show, shopping mall) and you ended up getting separated? You tried calling and texting each other, but the network was congested. You even thought of sharing your location via WhatsApp, but there wasn’t an Internet connection for that to happen!  You couldn’t help feeling, “If only wireless connectivity could be easier!”

The new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Wi-Fi Aware™, announced July 14 by the Wi-Fi Alliance, has a solution for that problem. Mobile devices are about to become truly “local” and “social.” What that means is that all mobile devices which are Wi-Fi Aware-capable will be able to discover each other and initiate “interactions” with each other in a pure peer-to-peer fashion. By interactions, I mean services and applications that we already use today on our phones like social networking, gaming, maps, VOIP chat, targeted ads and coupons. All these applications today need some form of Internet connectivity in order to run. Wi-Fi Aware provides for a mechanism for users to initiate interactions with people and services in their “proximity” without the need to be connected to a Wireless Access Point. Common examples might include friend-finder, social gaming, walkie-talkie or a product locater inside a marketplace.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WI-FI Aware is a new certification program for a new capability of Wi-Fi previously known as “Neighbor Awareness Networking” (NAN). Wi-Fi Aware enables a unique peer-to-peer technology that does not require real-time connection to a Wi-Fi infrastructure, server, GPS or other geo-location, but instead uses direct device-to-device Wi-Fi to discover and exchange information. It enables devices to discover nearby information and services before even making a connection. Wi-Fi Aware makes social/local/mobile applications more useful and personalized, and works well in crowded environments. It is designed for power efficiency.

Marvell demonstrated sample NAN capabilities earlier this year at Mobile World Congress. The demo was used in the context of a navigation application, which traditionally has huge challenges operating indoors. Using two Marvell-powered smartphones, one user could discover his nearby colleague and use the mapping application via a Wi-Fi Direct connection to navigate right to him.

Wi-Fi™ Aware extends Wi-Fi’s capabilities with a real-time, energy-efficient discovery mechanism that will allow a multitude of proximity-based applications.  The Marvell Avastar family of wireless connectivity chipsets supports the Wi-Fi Alliance NAN Specification and we hope to be Wi-Fi Aware-certified soon.  In fact, Marvell’s recently announced Avastar Marvell 88W8997 chipset already supports the industry’s most advanced connectivity feature sets including 802.11mc, an IEEE standard for precise indoor location; BLE Angle of Arrival/Angle of Departure based on Bluetooth SIG standards and Multi-User MIMO for robust wireless connectivity. These advanced features, combined with Wi-Fi Aware, will allow our customers to build exciting new products and enable application developers to add a whole new dimension to how mobile devices interact with each other. This will open the door to truly Social & Local mobile applications. So with the new Wi-Fi Aware, if you aren’t sure where you want to go next, I’m sure there will be an app right around the corner that will help you.