HOUSTON, Oct. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- ISA EXPO Booth# 1978 -- GainSpan, an innovator in Wi-Fi sensor network technology, today unveiled a wireless sensor network solution that utilizes the widely deployed Wi-Fi infrastructure while providing years of battery life for sensors and other connected devices. GainSpan's semiconductor and software solutions deliver the security, manageability, and convenience benefits of Wi-Fi along with 5-10 years of extended battery life needed for applications such as temperature monitoring for energy management, condition monitoring of industrial equipment in manufacturing plants or streetlights in metro areas.

"Enabling users to leverage Wi-Fi for sensor applications with years of battery life makes GainSpan solutions unique in the market place," said Vijay Parmar, President and CEO of GainSpan. "Our solutions represent a breakthrough in the world of wireless sensor networks, enabling sensors and other devices with up to 10 years of battery life with all the benefits afforded by a solution based on mature standards."

The GainSpan GS1010 SoC is an ultra low-power System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution that leverages the widely deployed Wi-Fi (IEEE(R) 802.11) network. By utilizing this infrastructure, people can deploy sensor systems using standard tools and knowledge base, and seamlessly integrate with existing management systems, including enterprise network management systems, as well as existing SCADA industrial and building automation systems. Additionally, the chip's power management feature provides years of battery life and enables a new class of Wi-Fi products that open the door to many new applications and usage models that improve indoor and outdoor air quality, reduce energy consumption, cut costs and improve operational efficiencies.

"While wireless sensor networks have seen steady growth over the past few years, their market potential has, in fact, been hindered by power consumption issues and lack of mature standards based solutions," said Harry Forbes, senior analyst at ARC Advisory Group. "GainSpan has addressed this issue with a Wi-Fi based solution enabling Wi-Fi sensor devices with years of battery life. This solution allows users to leverage the global Wi-Fi standard, existing network tools and knowledge investments. Deploying these in wireless sensor devices would provide the cost, energy savings and convenience needed to transform this market. In fact, with low-power Wi-Fi, GainSpan has the potential to 'change the game'."

GainSpan semiconductor and software solutions are designed to flexibly support a broad range of applications and enable customers to easily tailor systems to their specific needs at a low total cost of ownership and high return on investment. GainSpan solutions can be incorporated into products that may be used in:

-- Industrial motor monitoring, to save energy and improve efficiencies -- Buildings, to save energy, improve indoor air quality and safety -- Food and drug manufacturers, to monitor temperature of goods through their supply chain -- Auto-manufacturing plants, to track vehicles during production -- Oil refineries, to locate staff during emergencies -- Utilities, to automatically read meters and monitor infrastructure equipment -- Public metro areas, to monitor street and traffic lights, and support emergency response services -- Bridges, to automatically verify the safety of these structures after an earthquake, allowing city infrastructures to quickly return to normal operation -- Mining, to accurately track real-time movements of miners -- Data centers, to monitor and control temperatures and energy usage -- Hospitals, to track patients, wheelchairs, diagnostic equipment, and staff About GainSpan Solutions

GainSpan's innovative product line was designed to meet the specific battery life and other requirements of Wi-Fi sensor devices. The GainSpan GS1010 SoC offers flexibility to support a wide range of products and applications with an embedded 802.11b/g radio, two 32-bit ARM7 microcontrollers, real-time clock (RTC) and power management unit, FLASH and SRAM memories along with multiple I/Os, and support for location awareness. The complete solution provides a suite of easy-to-use development tools for OEMs that makes development less time consuming and complicated, so products can get to market quickly.

GainSpan also offers the GainSpan Management System (GMS), a software solution that sits in the network and addresses specific needs of managing Wi-Fi sensors and other connected devices.

Pricing and Availability

The GS1010 is sampling now, with production quantities available in December 2007, and is priced at $15.00 in 10,000 unit quantities.

About GainSpan

GainSpan is a technology innovator and leader in Wi-Fi semiconductor and software solutions that provide years of battery life for sensors and other connected devices. GainSpan brings Wi-Fi sensor networks to life with breakthrough technology that leverages the ubiquitous Wi-Fi infrastructure and enables Wi-Fi devices to run up to 10 years on an AA battery. GainSpan solutions enable people to save money, save energy and work smarter. For more information, visit http://www.gainspan.com/.

GainSpan is a trademark of GainSpan Corporation. Other marks are property of their respective owners.

Note to editors: Quote Sheet Follows Listed in alphabetical order of company names: Aginova

"For the past three years, we've been working with Zigbee based solutions for our infrastructure applications. But installing a stable wireless sensor network has always been a major -- and costly -- undertaking," said Ashok Sabata, Ph.d, Aginova, Inc., a provider of wireless sensor networks for condition based maintenance and storage monitoring. "Using GainSpan's low power Wi-Fi based solutions we found that the almost ubiquitous nature of Wi-Fi reduced total system cost and the 'off the shelf' tools made development easy. In just two months, we've developed a complete Wi-Fi temperature monitoring solution for storage spaces (from warehouses to refrigerators). In fact, our customer demos have gone so well that we expect to start installations in Q4."

Aginova PR contact: Ashok Sabata, CEO 732-780-7065 info@aginova.comhttp://www.aginova.com/ Apprion

"We have been working closely with GainSpan and look forward to taking advantage of their unique Wi-Fi sensor technology in Apprion's Industrial Wireless Applications Network System - the ION system," said Stephen Lambright, Apprion's CEO.

Apprion PR contact: Sarah Prinster 650-934-5700 x727 sarah.prinster@apprion.comhttp://www.apprion.com/ MicroStrain

"We have been working closely with GainSpan and look forward to incorporating their unique Wi-Fi sensor technology in our next-generation wireless monitoring systems," said Chris Townsend, Executive Vice President of Engineering at MicroStrain, Inc., a leader in low power sensor networks used in test and measurement applications.

MicroStrain PR contact: Mike Robinson 802-862-6629 mirobinson@microstrain.comhttp://www.microstrain.com/ Nivis

"GainSpan's much anticipated low-power 802.11 solution is rapidly becoming a building block in Nivis' industrial and commercial wireless platforms. By merging an 802.11 transceiver and powerful processing into an unprecedented low-power SoC, the GainSpan solution opens new markets in which existing 802.11 infrastructures are leveraged. Applicability of the technology ranges from low-power sensor networks deployed in industrial environments to Electronic Price Signage in the commercial sector."

Nivis PR contact: Joe Bost 678-202-6860 http://www.nivis.com/ Oceana Sensor

"GainSpan's innovative products provide the basis for a low power solution to a single point-sensing device. The ability to incorporate the GS1010 into our product line allows our customers to utilize their existing Wi-Fi network to deploy and redeploy vital sensors," said Alex Kalasinsky, President and CEO. "With our Wireless Sensor Module (WSeM(TM)) customers can implement effective wireless sensor networks while achieving bottom-line benefits. GainSpan products are the heart of the WSeM(TM)."

Oceana Sensor PR contact: 757-426-3678 http://www.oceanasensor.com/ Sensicast

"Gainspan is the first company to meet our stringent requirements for battery-operated Wi-Fi sensor networks," said Gary Ambrosino, CEO of Sensicast, an industry-leading vendor of turnkey wireless sensor networking systems. "We are delighted to partner with GainSpan to integrate its low-power Wi-Fi system into a solid platform for rapid development of Wi-Fi SensiNet systems from Sensicast."

Sensicast PR contact: Patrick Rafter prafter@sensicast.com 617-901-2697 mobile http://www.sensicast.com/

CONTACT: Janice Mackey, Public Relations, +1-916-717-9165,
jmackey@webershandwick.com, for GainSpan Corporation; or Peter Brown of
GainSpan Corporation, +1-408-689-2411, peter.brown@gainspan.com

Web site: http://www.gainspan.com/