SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Ruckus Wireless said today that it has developed and will demonstrate the first Smart Wi-Fi system based on next-generation 802.11n technology at the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 8-11, 2007.

The company also announced that it has been named an Innovations 2007 Design and Engineering Award Honoree by the Consumer Electronics Association for its popular MediaFlex NG product. The Innovations honor is independently judged based on a variety of criteria such as engineering qualities of the product, unique and novel features and the contribution the product makes to consumers' quality of life.

The Ruckus Wireless demonstration at CES will showcase, for the first time, remarkable advances in Wi-Fi technology that make it possible to reliably transport many HDTV streams, digital voice, music and data throughout the home without costly and cumbersome cabling.

Current products based on draft 802.11n specification allow devices to transmit at speeds greater than 70 Mbps, but they all have problems sustaining the high performance at far distances, challenging locations or in noisy environments.

The Ruckus "Smart-N" technology rejects noise and delivers consistent throughput regardless of location and device placement. By combining the award-winning Ruckus BeamFlex smart antenna technology and SmartCast traffic engineering software with commercial 802.11n silicon, the Ruckus Smart-N system automatically adapts to environmental challenges such as physical obstacles and radio noise to maximize sustainable throughput and minimize performance variability.

"Early Pre-N products failed to fulfill the promise of delivering solid, stable bandwidth to support whole-home high-definition video streams," said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. "This is the killer application that consumers and carriers really care about, and this is what we're demonstrating to the world."

Despite the popularity of wireless IPTV in Europe and Asia, incumbent carriers in North America still rely on wires and are waiting for higher speed wireless technology to support multiple HDTV streams within a home.

Additionally, many U.S. operators and consumer electronics companies are moving toward a "whole-home DVR" model in which a central media center collects all the digital multimedia content and distributes the content in real-time to media receivers around the home.

While Wi-Fi is the ideal in-home distribution technology, performance and coverage variability have prohibited operators from using it for this emerging application. 802.11n is widely viewed as the solution but in reality, it takes much more than simply slapping on a new chipset and adding a few more antennas. An adaptable Wi-Fi system that automatically tunes a myriad of new 802.11n parameters and controls RF signals to ensure predictable performance anywhere in the home has become the new industry benchmark.

Ruckus Wireless Inc.