STMicroelectronics and Quantenna Communications Inc. announced the availability of a reference design enabling premium 4K video quality over home Wi-Fi networks, demonstrated in a highly compact, fan-less box. The reference design offers superior indoor coverage, better portability, and multi-room usage. This new collaboration between ST and Quantenna is a natural step to address the 4K Ultra HD market after the announcement at IBC 2015 of the ST Cannes Wi-Fi (STiH390) SoC, first single-chip device for HD set-top-box wireless-client markets.

The new reference-design box integrates ST's performance-proven Cannes 4K ARM® quad-core SoC. Commercially available, it is already pre-integrated with middleware and supported by a large ecosystem that enables customers to rapidly build attractive solutions with short time to market. The ST Cannes 4K SoC is optimized for both cost and performance, and when combined with Quantenna QSR1000, it relies on a 4x4 MIMO architecture supporting DynaMMO (Dynamic multi-user MIMO) technology, dynamic digital beamforming, and four spatial streams to deliver ultra-high performance, range, reliability, and coverage.

Standards-based, the ST/Quantenna reference-design operates with all third-party 802.11ac and 802.11n devices.