Marvell's Advanced Avastar Connectivity Solution Supports New Social Wi-Fi and Indoor Location Technologies

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and BARCELONA, Spain, March 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) – a worldwide leader in providing complete silicon solutions from mobile communications to storage, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud infrastructure, digital entertainment and in-home content delivery and Kinoma® software enabling the "Smart Life and Smart Lifestyle," – today announced that Marvell's advanced Avastar® 88W8887 and 88W8897 System-on-Chips (SoCs), now support Wi-Fi Alliance Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN) specification. NAN 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. On the other hand, indoor location and navigation has been a huge challenge, because traditional GPS does not work very well indoors.  The latest advanced indoor location technology from Indoo.rs allows users to navigate inside places such as retail shops, hospitals, schools and offices. By combining the NAN feature with indoor navigation capabilities on Marvell's connectivity chipsets, Marvell offers its customers a complete solution for discovering & navigating to the location of nearby friends as well as various points of interest.

"NAN and advanced indoor location technology extends the ability for billions of wirelessly connected devices to discover & locate each other in a direct peer-to-peer fashion," said Philip Poulidis, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile and Internet of Things Business Units at Marvell. "Marvell is proud to work with Indoo.rs and support the growing number of wireless connected devices and continue setting the standard for Wi-Fi & Bluetooth technology."

"Precise indoor navigation and bringing 'location intelligence' to mobile apps enables consumers to connect and stay connected – regardless of location," said Hannes Stiebitzhofer, CEO of Indoo.rs. "Joining forces with Marvell is a significant opportunity to advance the technology for intelligent indoor location-aware services, we look forward to our continued expansion together."

Marvell's current chipsets support indoor location and navigation using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons and Wi-Fi received signal strength indication (RSSI). Marvell's 11ac wave-2 chipsets will take indoor location & navigation to the next level by adding support for 802.11mc, an IEEE standard for precise indoor location as well as BLE Angle of Arrival/Angle of Departure based on Bluetooth SIG standards. Marvell recently announced support for 802.11mc for precise indoor location on its first 4x4 11ac wave-2 chipset the Avastar 88W8964. This will be followed by support for 802.11mc and BT AoA/AoD on client devices with 802.11ac wave-2 line of chipsets later this year. 

Key features of NAN include:

• The Wi-Fi Alliance NAN program uses Wi-Fi technology in low-power background mode to make the devices 'neighbor aware'. It enables mobile devices to efficiently discover, people and services in their proximity. NAN scales effectively in dense Wi-Fi environments and complements the high data rate connectivity of Wi-Fi by providing information about people and services in the proximity.
• Example use cases for NAN include social gaming, team coordination, advertisements of goods and pricing at a marketplace.

Key features of indoor location technology include:

• The ability for users to navigate inside malls, hospitals, schools, offices and other locations. Venue owners can use the technology to track assets, generate heat maps, send context aware mobile advertisements and plan show displays.

The Indoo.rs Viewer application is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.

For more information on Marvell's advanced Avastar Connectivity solutions, please visit: http://www.marvell.com/wireless/

Marvell at Mobile World Congress
Both NAN and Location/Navigation technologies will be demonstrated at the Marvell booth at Mobile World Congress 2015, held March 2-5, at Fira Gran Via in Barcelona. To see demonstrations and learn more, show attendees and media can visit the Marvell booth, located in Hall 8.1, Stand No. CC8.14.

About Marvell
Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) is a global leader in providing complete silicon solutions and Kinoma software enabling the "Smart Life and Smart Lifestyle." From mobile communications to storage, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud infrastructure, digital entertainment and in-home content delivery, Marvell's diverse product portfolio aligns complete platform designs with industry-leading performance, security, reliability and efficiency. At the core of the world's most powerful consumer, network and enterprise systems, Marvell empowers partners and their customers to always stand at the forefront of innovation, performance and mass appeal. By providing people around the world with mobility and ease of access to services adding value to their social, private and work lives, Marvell is committed to enhancing the human experience.

As used in this release, the term "Marvell" refers to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and its subsidiaries. For more information, please visit www.Marvell.com.

Marvell, the M logo, Avastar, and Kinoma are registered trademarks of Marvell and/or its affiliates. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

For Further Information Contact:

Marvell Media Relations

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SOURCE Marvell

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