The AR9281 single-band (2.4GHz) 1x2 MIMO (1 transmit, 2 receive) PCIe design delivers 300 Mbps PHY rates on the receive side, while providing up to 150 Mbps in transmit. The 1x2 design is, according to Atheros, the lowest cost MIMO configuration able to obtain Wi-Fi Draft 11n certification. The dual-band AR9280 has a 2x2 MIMO design.

Both chips and reference designs support Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS and Linux operating systems. They also include support for WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia), Wi-Fi Protected Setup and Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX).

The Atheros AR9280 and AR9281 solutions are currently sampling to customers and will be in volume production in the first quarter of 2008.