Wireless transmission speeds in your home or business as fast as 7 gigabits per second. That’s the vision of the next generation of WiFi, called WiGig, offered in a cooperation agreement announced Monday between the Wi-Fi Alliance and the WiGig Alliance.
The two industry groups said that they will share technology specification for the creation of a Wi-Fi Alliance certification for operation at 60 GHz. Current Wi-Fi network supports 2.4 and 5 GHz. Downward compatibility to the current spec is expected in many devices that will support WiGig.
Tri-Band Wi-Fi
The top transmission rate of 7 Gbps is more than ten times faster than the highest 802.11N Wi-Fi rate. The organizations said that protocol adaptation layers, now in development, will support different device architectures, including PC data buses and displays such as HD TVs, monitors, and projectors.
Both organizations have been working toward faster transmission protocols, and both share many member companies in common. For example, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Panasonic are members of both groups.
What Kind of Apps?
One question is what kind of applications used in homes and businesses could benefit from such high wireless speeds. Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, pointed to synchronization of content as one possible use case. He noted that most synchronization between devices takes place over wires, and often requires the transfer of large files such as music or video.
He noted that another possible use is backup to a central hard drive, which again often utilizes wires. Both of these utility services could become an automated occurrence for every device — and, if widely adopted, very high local transmission speeds could mean that virtually every device becomes wireless.
This could also include high-definition TVs, Blu-ray DVD players, and HD cameras that didn’t rely on wires for their display. Standards for that purpose have already been developed by such groups as the WirelessHD Alliance, but they are just being adopted.
