The Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig Alliance) today announced a cooperation agreement for multi-gigabit wireless networking, supporting Wi-Fi operation in the 60 GHz frequency band.
It’s similar to SiBEAM’s existing technology (WirelessHD), but combines 60 GHz with traditional Wi-Fi networking that extends the range at slower speeds to go through walls and cover the entire home.
It will complement the current family of Wi-Fi technologies, says WiGig. Targeted primarily for applications that require gigabit speeds, 60 GHz products are expected to be used in a wide range of high-performance devices. A significant portion, if not all, of these devices are expected to also support traditional Wi-Fi networking in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has also been developing a standard at 60 GHz called IEEE 802.11AD, but has indicated that WiGig looks to be complementary to WiFi, especially since Intel, Broadcom and Atheros all have plans to integrate the technology into WiFi chipsets.
Another 60 GHz standard, WirelessHD, was designed for video streaming between two devices, WiGig is oriented more toward data networking and is not as well-suited to video. SiBEAM, a backer of WirelessHD, today announced the industry’s first dual mode WirelessHD/WiGig chipset and development kit. The company now becomes the first company to make available both WirelessHD and WiGig solutions. Its dual mode WirelessHD/WiGig chipset will be available in June.
Wireless Gigabit Alliance has 26 companies behind their WiGig standard. It supports data transmission rates up to 7 Gbps and is aimed initially at allowing WLAN devices to communicate at gigabit speeds within a typical room.
WiGig, formed in May 2009, is backed by Intel, Dell, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Toshiba, Nvidia, AMD, Texas Instruments, Atheros, Marvell, Realtek and Broadcom and other significant names.
SiBeam was formed in 2004 and recently raised $36.5 million in venture funding. Consumer electronics products from Best Buy, LG Electronics, Panasonic and Sony have been shipping over the last year.
It will expand the utility of Wi-Fi, used by hundreds of millions of people every day,” said Wi-Fi Alliance chief executive officer Edgar Figueroa. “From its inception, the WiGig specification was designed to work on a wide variety of devices, making it a compelling input as we begin to define our certification program for 60 GHz wireless.”
“Now that our specification is complete and published, it’s time to set our sights on driving a great user experience through interoperability and certification,” said Dr. Ali Sadri, president and chairman of the WiGig Alliance. “We are happy to work with the Wi-Fi Alliance to extend multi-gigabit capabilities to the Wi-Fi technology portfolio.”
Competing 60 GHz standards such as WirelessHD, 802.11ad, and 802.15.3c, and their possible coexistence, are analized in a new research paper by ABI Research.
- WirelessHD is currently available in products using the unlicensed 60 GHz frequency band. Forty companies are promoters and adopters, including SiBeam and Broadcom. Its initial use-case is for streaming of HDTV signals within the home.
- 802.11ad is the official IEEE standard in the 60 GHz band. It’s designed to ensure co-existence with legacy and future systems.
- 802.15.3c is for Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN).
- Quantenna’s Full-11n technology is said to deliver full HD video quality across distances of 100 feet or more, regardless of signal interferences and dead zones that exist in most residential environments. It uses the 5 GHz band.
- The WHDI Consortium also uses the 5 GHz band. The company claims it can transmit HDTV about 100 feet at an effective 3 gigabits per second using a novel “compression” scheme. It claims it does not compress HDTV signals but uses a novel error compression scheme, not image compression.
Related Dailywireless articles include; SiBeam Gets Cisco Investment, Olympic Coverage: Free Space Radical, Battle for the Home: 802.11n Vrs 60 GHz, WiGig Goes to “11?Wireless Home Digital Interface: Replacing HDMI Cables?, HomeNetworking: A Universal Spec?, Wireless HDTV: Battle of the Bands, WiGiG: WirelessHD + Wi-Fi?, Wireless HDTV Gets Amimon Chips, Ultrawideband Proponent Shuts Down.
