WiGig Alliance teams with Wi-Fi group for superfast wireless
Monday, May 10, 2010 8:15Two international short-range wireless industry groups announced an agreement on Monday to promote faster Wi-Fi in the 60GHz frequency band, as well as the two bands where Wi-Fi now operates.
Use of the 60GHz band, which is also unlicensed, would give users the ability to send data at much faster speeds than with existing Wi-Fi, into the 1Gbps, or faster, realm. With the new standard, a user could send a high-definition video across a living room wirelessly from an HD player to an HD television, eliminating the need for a cabled connection.
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The two groups, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (also known as WiGig Alliance), announced they will cooperate on multi-gigabit networking within the 60GHz band.
Wi-Fi traditionally works within the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, and the Wi-Fi Alliance wants coming 60GHz-capable devices be backwards compatible with existing Wi-Fi specifications, Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa told Computerworld.
WiGig announced a specification in December, which it said at the time would result in data transfer rates between devices of more than 10 times faster than today’s wireless LANs, or up to 7Gbps, about 10 times the 802.11n rate.
Figueroa, however, would not discuss the rates that would result from the alliance announced on Monday, saying only it would support 1Gbps speeds or faster.
WiGig had already attracted leading manufacturers of semi-conductors to its board, including Intel and Marvell International. The board also includes a range of computing device makers, such as Dell, LG Electronics, Nokia, Samsung Electroincs, and Toshiba. Microsoft is also a board member.
ABI Research forecasts that various manufacturers will build 2 million 60GHz chipsets by 2015, and the analysis firm has been tracking several industry groups that want to make products within the 60GHz band.
Some analysts believe that the specification announced by WiGig will eliminate competing standards groups such as WirelessHD supporters, which is backed by 40 companies, but ABI’s Xavier Ortiz said that WiGig can co-exist alongside rival industry groups.
“I don’t think the two groups are going to fight each other to the death, and each will focus on their market,” he said. WirelessHD has more of a focus on streaming of HD TV signals inside of homes, while WiGig seems to have a greater focus on sharing data between device, perhaps sending a backup of a personal computer to a storage device.
WirelessHD products are beginning to emerge from SiBeam and Georgia Tech for receiving and transmitting video signals — but they are expensive, Ortiz said.
In a statement issued in April, Ortiz said that WiGig’s joining with the Wi-Fi Alliance means that WiGig’s approach “will likely be successful.”
Figueroa said the Wi-Fi Alliance has not ruled out working with the WirelessHD group. “We are going to be considering all the 60GHz groups for how compelling they are and how well-suited to complement Wi-Fi,” he said.
