Sure, Wireless Field Day 6 is long since over, yet this quick blog is very much about Xirrus at WF6. My mind zipped back there as I was working away at my desk, and glancing over at the Twitter feed I saw that one Avi Hartenstein is now following me in the Twitterverse. As I returned the favor and added him to my own list, I got hit with the recollection of what Avi was able to do for Xirrus at WFD6.
Simply put, he softened hearts and opened up minds.
I’ve done my own share of wishing Xirrus would open up more about how they execute their unique antenna magic to allow lots of radios to all co-exist under the hood of one of their funky arrays, and it’s no secret that a number of the Wireless Field Day delegates were pretty skeptical about Xirrus’ methods.
But then came Avi. A humble, confident, fairly mellow fellow that basically made his case, shared a bit of his methodology, and told us esentially to take it or leave it because he designed it, it works, and he can prove it. And in the background, I can’t be the only one that was hearing “Ice Ice Baby” playing in my head.
This cool dude reminded us that antenna designs can vary dramatically between the “what you think you see” and the “what it actually does electrically” paradigms. And that was nice.
Sam Clements wrote a good blog after trying a Xirrus unit after WFD6, on the ability of Xirrus to put out a directional signal. It’s a good read.
I’m sure there are still Xirrus skeptics out there, but if you ever get a chance to interact with Mr. Hartenstein you’ll be glad you did. He’s an Antenna Guy for sure, and I hope we hear a lot from him on Twitter because he may tell the Xirrus story better than anyone.
wirednot 
Wonder if xirrus execs know that 1 Avi is worth 20 marketing “folk” ? Commercial consumers are sophisticated these days (and jaded) . Antenna design has always been more of an art than a science. Avi bumped up xirrus cred dramatically with a forthright presentation
I totally agree, Dave. Some of the best product “sells” I’ve ever heard come from tech folks. I don’t mean to throw rocks at marketers, but for a tech audience, subject matter experts are definitely the way to for speakers.
Dave, The xirrus product are highly integrated, in a way a system in a box. It is true that the antennas are a critical part of the equation. Whenever we stat a new product development, we find the balance between mechanical, electrical and product design. Obviously, everybody would like the product to be as small and compact looking where as the antenna designer I would have as large as possible antenna in order to achieve coverage and efficiency/gain. So there is always the back and forth process to reach a design that meets all the product requirements. I think that here at Xirrus we were able to maximize the antenna performance and optimize the radio transceiver and the RF front end to the maximum allowable performance that can be achieved.
Regards,
Avi
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