Cees Links (born in 1957 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is a Dutch entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of GreenPeak Technologies (2004), a fabless semiconductor company for Smart Home and Internet of things (IoT) applications, in 2016 sold to Qorvo Inc., a USA-based semi-conductor/technology company.
Upon graduation from the University of Twente in 1982, Links started his career at NCR Corporation. As product manager, he was responsible for the first concept development and launch of the world's first wireless LAN product in 1990, WaveLAN, a major innovation at that time. Throughout several acquisitions and divestitures (NCR, AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Agere Systems), Links continued his work in the wireless LAN area, which he turned into a multi-hundred million dollar business for Agere Systems. Links started as product manager, responsible for the initial Wi-Fi marketing and concept creation and in 1996 became general manager of the Wi-Fi business unit. He directly closed the deal [1] with Steve Jobs at Apple Computer in 1999 that ignited the growth of the wireless LAN industry. Through this deal, wireless LANs went on to become the standard communication feature as Wi-Fi is known today.
Links has also been involved with wireless next-generation technology breakthroughs in the Zigbee Alliance, now the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), and the IoT. From 1991 until 2002, Links was involved in the establishment of the IEEE 802.11 standardization committee and the Wi-Fi Alliance. He was also instrumental in helping to establish the IEEE 802.15 standardization committee to become the basis for the Zigbee/Thread/Matter sense and control networking technology and standardization.
In 2004 Links founded GreenPeak Technologies (originally under the stealth name of Xanadu Wireless), where he was CEO. GreenPeak is a fabless semiconductor company with a strong focus on wireless for sense and control networks in Smart Home and Internet of Things applications. Links got the company launched and uniquely positioned in the market. He has grown the team to +100 people and accelerated growth.
In May 2016, GreenPeak Technologies was acquired by Qorvo.
Links was recognized in January 2017 as Wi-Fi pioneer with the Golden Mousetrap Lifetime Achievement award. [2]
In May 2019, Wireless technology innovator Cees Links inducted into Wi-Fi NOW Hall of Fame [3]
On 29 October 2019, the WaveLAN team received an IEEE Milestone Award, where WaveLAN was recognized as the precursor of Wi-Fi, leading to the formation of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group for Wireless Local Area Networks. During this celebration event that took place in the City Hall of Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, the town where most of the WaveLAN developments had taken place. During that event, Links received an honorary citizenship of the City of Nieuwegein.
Links was born in 1957 and raised in Amsterdam, the son of Piet Links, a mathematics teacher, who taught Cees the love for numbers and analytics, and Thea van der Kolk. He has 6 siblings. During his study his favourite subject was the transition of “data” into “information”, how numbers can become meaningful to communicate information for solving problems. “Information Links” was the name of his first company that he started in 1979. From his upbringing “meaningful” was a key word, which for him turned into “A connected world is a better world”, explaining his passion for continuous improvement of communication.
Links holds a master's degree in Applied Mathematics and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the Twente University of Technology in Enschede, the Netherlands. He graduated from an Advanced Business Management Course from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham NC, USA.
Links lives in Maarssen, the Netherlands. He is married to Angela Champness, father of five and grandfather of three.
Author of the book: “The Spirit of Wi-Fi”, about the Wi-Fi history. Subtitle: “Wi-Fi: where it so suddenly came from, where it is today and where it is going in the future.”
Professor Wolter Lemstra for TU Delft wrote an in-depth study on “The Innovation Journey of Wi-Fi”, issued by Cambridge Press and explaining Cees' role in the development of Wi-Fi. [4]
IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication. The standard and amendments provide the basis for wireless network products using the Wi-Fi brand and are the world's most widely used wireless computer networking standards. IEEE 802.11 is used in most home and office networks to allow laptops, printers, smartphones, and other devices to communicate with each other and access the Internet without connecting wires. IEEE 802.11 is also a basis for vehicle-based communication networks with IEEE 802.11p.
A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking allows homes, telecommunications networks and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment locations. Admin telecommunications networks are generally implemented and administered using radio communication. This implementation takes place at the physical level (layer) of the OSI model network structure.
Wi-Fi is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves. These are the most widely used computer networks, used globally in home and small office networks to link devices and to provide Internet access with wireless routers and wireless access points in public places such as coffee shops, hotels, libraries, and airports to provide visitors.
Nordic Semiconductor ASA was founded in 1983 and is a Norwegian fabless technology company with its headquarters in Trondheim, Norway. The company specializes in designing ultra-low-power wireless communication semiconductors and supporting software for engineers developing and manufacturing Internet of Things (IoT) products.
A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Devices capable of participating in this network, for example, smart devices such as network printers and handheld mobile computers, often gain enhanced emergent capabilities through their ability to interact. These additional capabilities can be used to increase the quality of life inside the home in a variety of ways, such as automation of repetitive tasks, increased personal productivity, enhanced home security, and easier access to entertainment.
Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. The company was founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and private industry. The company was renamed Atheros Communications in 2000 and it completed an initial public offering in February 2004, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol ATHR.
WaveLAN was a brand name for a family of wireless networking technology sold by NCR, AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and Agere Systems as well as being sold by other companies under OEM agreements. The WaveLAN name debuted on the market in 1990 and was in use until 2000, when Agere Systems renamed their products to ORiNOCO. WaveLAN laid the important foundation for the formation of IEEE 802.11 working group and the resultant creation of Wi-Fi.
IEEE 802.11 – or more correctly IEEE 802.11-1997 or IEEE 802.11-1999 – refer to the original version of the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking standard released in 1997 and clarified in 1999. Most of the protocols described by this early version are rarely used today.
IEEE 802.11a-1999 or 802.11a was an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 wireless local network specifications that defined requirements for an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system. It was originally designed to support wireless communication in the unlicensed national information infrastructure (U-NII) bands as regulated in the United States by the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, Section 15.407.
IEEE 802.11b-1999 or 802.11b is an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking specification that extends throughout up to 11 Mbit/s using the same 2.4 GHz band. A related amendment was incorporated into the IEEE 802.11-2007 standard.
IEEE 802.11g-2003 or 802.11g is an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 specification that operates in the 2.4 GHz microwave band. The standard has extended link rate to up to 54 Mbit/s using the same 20 MHz bandwidth as 802.11b uses to achieve 11 Mbit/s. This specification, under the marketing name of Wi‑Fi, has been implemented all over the world. The 802.11g protocol is now Clause 19 of the published IEEE 802.11-2007 standard, and Clause 19 of the published IEEE 802.11-2012 standard.
IEEE 802.15.4a was an amendment to IEEE 802.15.4-2006 specifying that additional physical layers (PHYs) be added to the original standard. It has been merged into and is superseded by IEEE 802.15.4-2011.
WiGig, alternatively known as 60 GHz Wi-Fi, refers to a set of 60 GHz wireless network protocols. It includes the current IEEE 802.11ad standard and also the IEEE 802.11ay standard.
Wilocity was a fabless semiconductor company based in California founded in 2007 developing 60 GHz multi-gigabit wireless chipsets for both the mobile computing platform and peripheral markets. Wilocity was founded in March 2007 by executives and engineers from Intel's Wi-Fi Centrino group. While Wilocity is based in California, most of its employees are in Israel. Based on the WiGig specification, Wilocity's Wireless PCI Express (wPCIe) technology enables multi-gigabit wireless for applications including I/O, networking and video.
IEEE 802.11ac-2013 or 802.11ac is a wireless networking standard in the IEEE 802.11 set of protocols, providing high-throughput wireless local area networks (WLANs) on the 5 GHz band. The standard has been retroactively labelled as Wi-Fi 5 by Wi-Fi Alliance.
GreenPeak Technologies was an Utrecht, Netherlands-based fabless company developing semiconductor products and software for the IEEE 802.15.4 and Zigbee wireless market segment. Zigbee technology is used for Smart Home data communications and to facilitate the Internet of Things, the term used to refer to devices designed to be operated and managed by internet-enabled controllers and management systems.
IEEE 802.11ah is a wireless networking protocol published in 2017 called Wi-Fi HaLow as an amendment of the IEEE 802.11-2007 wireless networking standard. It uses 900 MHz license-exempt bands to provide extended-range Wi-Fi networks, compared to conventional Wi-Fi networks operating in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands. It also benefits from lower energy consumption, allowing the creation of large groups of stations or sensors that cooperate to share signals, supporting the concept of the Internet of things (IoT). The protocol's low power consumption competes with Bluetooth, LoRa, and Zigbee, and has the added benefit of higher data rates and wider coverage range.
Qorvo is an American multinational company specializing in products for wireless, wired, and power markets. The company was created by the merger of TriQuint Semiconductor and RF Micro Devices, which was announced in 2014 and completed on January 1, 2015. It trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol QRVO. The headquarters for the company originally were in both Hillsboro, Oregon, and Greensboro, North Carolina, but in mid-2016 the company began referring to its North Carolina site as its exclusive headquarters.
Wi-Fi 6, or IEEE 802.11ax, is an IEEE standard from the Wi-Fi Alliance, for wireless networks (WLANs). It operates in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, with an extended version, Wi-Fi 6E, that adds the 6 GHz band. It is an upgrade from Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), with improvements for better performance in crowded places. Wi-Fi 6 covers frequencies in license-exempt bands between 1 and 7.125 GHz, including the commonly used 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, as well as the broader 6 GHz band.
IEEE 802.11be, dubbed Extremely High Throughput (EHT), is the latest of the IEEE 802.11 standard, which is designated Wi-Fi 7. It has built upon 802.11ax, focusing on WLAN indoor and outdoor operation with stationary and pedestrian speeds in the 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz frequency bands.
