Initially, ignoring the wisdom of the time that said OFDM was no good for indoor channels. The research project was eventually shut down due to lack of commercial interest, but the research leaders had enough faith to immediately start their own company (Radiata). Later, commercial success for Radiata came from being in the right place at the right time.
> Were there any close competitors?
In the research phase, not that I was aware of. In the commercial phase, Atheros. The story I was told after the event was that Cisco had decided to buy whichever company came to market first. Radiata came to market 2 weeks before Atheros and so Radiata was acquired.
> Was infrared close to being the winner?
It could have been, but specular reflection in IR channels causes inter-symbol interference, which limits the data rate. If someone could have solved that problem then IR might have happened instead of WiFi.
> I'm also surprised big enough FPGA was already around.
At the start of the project FPGAs were not big enough, so we had to partition across multiple 3000 series Xilinx parts. Bigger FPGAs had been released by the end of the project, so the transmitter fitted on a single XC4025 FPGA, using manual placement. The 4025s were brand new and Xilinx (as always) were difficult to deal with, so we had to beg for devices and they magnanimously granted us 3 or 4 chips.
At the time there wasn't much sense of occasion, as we were busy doing the work and none of us knew how big it would get.
Initially, ignoring the wisdom of the time that said OFDM was no good for indoor channels. The research project was eventually shut down due to lack of commercial interest, but the research leaders had enough faith to immediately start their own company (Radiata). Later, commercial success for Radiata came from being in the right place at the right time.
> Were there any close competitors?
In the research phase, not that I was aware of. In the commercial phase, Atheros. The story I was told after the event was that Cisco had decided to buy whichever company came to market first. Radiata came to market 2 weeks before Atheros and so Radiata was acquired.
> Was infrared close to being the winner?
It could have been, but specular reflection in IR channels causes inter-symbol interference, which limits the data rate. If someone could have solved that problem then IR might have happened instead of WiFi.
> I'm also surprised big enough FPGA was already around.
At the start of the project FPGAs were not big enough, so we had to partition across multiple 3000 series Xilinx parts. Bigger FPGAs had been released by the end of the project, so the transmitter fitted on a single XC4025 FPGA, using manual placement. The 4025s were brand new and Xilinx (as always) were difficult to deal with, so we had to beg for devices and they magnanimously granted us 3 or 4 chips.
At the time there wasn't much sense of occasion, as we were busy doing the work and none of us knew how big it would get.