Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry.
There seems to be an insatiable thirst for speed when it comes to wireless. Whatever we have today, users always want more than what’s currently available. I remember when the predecessors of Wi-Fi came to my office one day in the mid-1990s to show me how you could stay connected wireless to a network from anywhere in the office – to actually disconnect the wired Ethernet connection and stay connected to the network.
They set up a wireless LAN for my notebook. It was rated to perform at 2 megabits per second while roaming around the office with actual speeds around 750 kilobits per second. It seemed amazing at the time, and it would “only” cost $750 for the wireless router and another $500 for the wireless modem attached to each laptop.
During the ensuing years, the industry moved from these early disparate solutions into a standards process that resulted in Wi-Fi (802.11b at 2.4GHz) that would enable multiple manufacturers to build products that were compatible with each other. The prices fell to affordable levels below $100 and the industry took off growing from thousands of units to millions of units.
Laptops now come with Wi-Fi built in that runs up to 300 Mbps using 802.11n technology, and that wireless network communications speed is going to jump to 600 Mbps by next year using 802.11ac technology. Lower cost and miniaturization enables manufacturers to embed Wi-Fi in every laptop, smartphone and tablet sold today. Both 802.11n (today) and 802.11ac (starting next year) use the 5 GHz frequency band. The Wi-Fi wireless communications standards process has brought seamless wireless connectivity to all mobile system users as they migrate from home to office and public places like airports.
Today, everyone is immersed in rich media. We play Blu-Ray high definition movies at home, we play music wherever we go and we take HD video and high resolution photos in our smartphone. This has created the need to store thousands of gigabytes of information. This information is spread out between our mobile devices, laptop/desktop PC/Mac, storage units and online in the cloud. And, the amount of information we’re creating and accessing is growing exponentially from gigabytes today to terabytes tomorrow. We now have more (mobile) devices as well as more information to manage.
This growth in number of mobile devices and amount of information has correspondingly created a need to access information – lots of it – just about everywhere we go – at the home, office and when out socially. And, the “now” generation doesn’t want to wait to access information. They want immediate access wherever they go.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could wirelessly manage all of our current rich media – store it and then transfer it quickly from one place to another? Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply attach everything in our home and office wirelessly?
And, wouldn’t it be great if we could actually use wireless to enable the power of a desktop while at home or in the office? We’d be able connect a notebook or tablet wirelessly to all the resources like storage devices, displays and the internet instead of having to place the notebook into a cradle. Additionally, we would be able to add functionality, processing power and interfaces that do not exist on the tablet, in the remote device.
The good news is that a number of companies are working to create the next high speed wireless standard called WiGig, a multi-gigabit wireless technology that will fundamentally change the way devices connect to each other. WiGig defined its core as an amendment to the IEEE802.11 standard, adding a third band (60 GHz) to existing dual-band (2.4/5 GHz) products. The new WiGig standard leverages the same Wi-Fi protocols for data transfer that are used in most mobile devices today. These tri-band Wi-Fi products will take advantage of the 12-plus years of industry Wi-Fi experience and will make it easier for hardware and software developers to implement WiGig into their products. Additionally, WiGig defines Application Layers on top of the core technology to add additional functionality. One of the most promising is called wireless bus extension, which extends wireless communications between components within a system.
WiGig / 802.11ad is able to transmit multiple gigabytes between devices and systems in seconds. While the spec defines rates up to 7 Gbps, I expect initial products to be about 5 Gbps in PC applications, which is more than 10-times faster than current Wi-Fi rates. I think it’s reasonable to expect this will evolve in the coming years to even higher performance levels.
In order to achieve this high level of performance, WiGig products transmit at 60 GHz. Most worldwide regulatory agencies have already allocated between 7 to 9 GHz of spectrum for use, which is about 100 times the 83.5 MHz of spectrum allowed for 2.4 GHz operation. This tremendous increase in bandwidth basically means that the transmissions can run a great deal faster, using much less complex technology than previous wireless standards.
With WiGig/802.11ad, each wireless channel is about 25-times wider than a typical 802.11ac channel, so it would be like having a 25 lane highway to move traffic compared to a one lane highway (or two or three lanes, if multiple spatial streams are used in .11ac).
The use of 60 GHz, which is targeted for in-room applications, provides a number of advantages over 5 GHz such as greater efficiency and throughput, and is a good complement to existing home and office networking standards.
Since the WiGig standards have just been ratified, we can expect to see a rapid adoption just like what happened years ago when the mobile and wireless industry agreed to the Wi-Fi standards. Already, a number of companies are moving from standards to product development and implementation for product introduction later this year.
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, I met with Wilocity in a private, off-the-show floor setting at the Las Vegas Hotel (formerly Las Vegas Hilton). Wilocity is a Silicon Valley startup funded by well-known venture captials Benchmark Capital, Tallwood and Sequoia Capital. Qualcomm/Atheros is a strategic investor.
The team at Wilocity has put together their WiGig solutions in a very interesting manner. It’s called Tri-band, and it utilizes the new 60 GHz solution for WiGig performance but also includes legacy Wi-Fi operating at the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz as well (via their partnership with Qualcomm/Atheros).
Wilocity’s Tri-band solution enables users to connect at whatever band offers the best available performance, delivering multi-gigabit data rates at 60 GHz, while maintaining compatibility with hundreds of millions of existing Wi-Fi products in the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands.
WiGig will be integrated into a number of different products including networked attached storage, advanced access points that will include both 802.11n and 802.11ad and Wi-Fi direct that enables two Wi-Fi enabled devices to communicate directly with each other without having to go through an access point. There are a number of interesting ways in which WiGig will enable people to be more productive using tri-band Wi-Fi and WBE.
Let’s take a look how someone might benefit from using WiGig in their life. Let’s call the person Alicia. First, each of the Alicia’s computing devices will incorporate multi-gigabit Wi-Fi (802.11ad) and her thin and light notebook will likely also include WiGig WBE. She walks into her home office to check on e-mail, gather some files and load up a few videos on her tablet. She doesn’t have to connect a bunch of cables. Rather, she just places her notebook on the table and begins to work. (WBE makes this happen).
Using WBE, the notebook is connected to the local storage server and Alicia’s large 25-inch monitor. Alicia uses her desktop keyboard, mouse and display to read and process a number of e-mails. And, she downloads some videos clips off the storage server in a matter of seconds that would normally take a number of minutes.
She picks up her notebook and goes to the office where she also has an environment set up to utilize WiGig. She’s immediately connected to the resources in the office. Her tablet, notebook and smartphone all sync up with the network that includes contacts, calendar and corporate files. Alicia goes to a meeting in which she makes a presentation by connecting to the projector using WBE. She works throughout the day never having to think about the underlying technology.
After work, she comes home and wants to watch a TV show that she accesses on her tablet. She directs the image to be played on her HDTV and it plays without any jitter or hesitation. She downloads some music via iTunes on her notebook and sees that it almost instantly available on her mobile devices as well.
As a result of WiGig, Alicia has been more productive and enjoyed her life without having to wait on file transfers for hours on end like before. She doesn’t worry about connecting components, but instead focuses on using and enjoying them. Life is certainly better than before. She now has more time to focus on the important people in her life instead of staring at a file trying to transfer from one system to another.
So, before long, WiGig will become as pervasive as traditional Wi-Fi is today. Every notebook, every tablet and, eventually, every smartphone will have WiGig embedded.
We’ll easily connect with our devices and between those devices and monitors, storage units and other peripherals. We’ll finally get rid of all those messy cables – ultrabooks with large monitors and disk drives will all interact wirelessly. And, setting up a home entertainment system will be a snap: you just turn on the components and they start working together.
Finally, WiGig wireless technology is going to make technology life easier – far easier – for millions of people.
Technology sidebars
For those interested in how the technology actually is deployed, we provide the following technology sidebars: 1) wireless docking, 2) distributed storage and 3) video distribution.
Technology scenario 1: Wireless docking
A key attribute of WiGig – and an integral part of the technology – is what’s called the wireless bus extension. This allows for the wireless extension of the main system bus. This enables a myriad of high speed devices to connect directly with the user’s notebook or desktop system. Thus, with WBE, other devices, monitors and displays can all “dock” with the user’s notebook PC.
The use of WBE enables users to greatly expand the capability of their mobile devices (smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks) into full desktop workstation productivity systems. WBE adds key system functionality that had been intentionally removed from these devices to hit price, size and thermal operating points, like additional storage, interfaces (GbE, SATA, video) and supplemental processing. With WBE, you can place your tablet in your work space and light up a workstation.
Technology scenario 2: Distributed storage
The second interesting use scenario involves the ability to perform distributed storage at lightning speeds. Large amounts or rich media can be distributed between a number of disparate devices. You can transfer typical files and media in seconds and minutes using WiGig versus hours using legacy wireless connectivity.
This enables a new kind of storage philosophy of distributed storage where information is retained on the user’s preferred device and then is shared or streamed to another device when needed. Software sync services like Sugarsync utilize this concept today but it will become more popular as WiGig comes into broad adoption. And, WiGig will enable more seamless backup solutions to be implemented so that, for example, the user’s information can first be backed up to a network attached storage device and then further backed up to the cloud.
With the advent of new ultrabooks that contain flash solid state storage instead of hard disk drives, many users will carry extended storage with them as they travel or go from one location to another. With WiGig, users can take along a high capacity portable drive that will operate as another system drive when in range of the ultrabook. Thus, you’d have, perhaps, 128 gigabytes of storage in your ultrabook and two terrabytes of storage in your portable drive that contains your rich media library of music and videos and in which the system can access faster WiGig wirelessly more quickly than most notebooks can access their internal drives.
The whole idea in WiGig is to make information available very quickly between systems so that users can focus on what they want to do rather than the intricacies of how to get it done.
Technology scenario 3: Video distribution
One really exciting WiGig application will be the ability to wirelessly connect to large external monitors as part of the docking solution. You’ll be able to walk into your office and lay your sleek ultrabook down on the counter and start working with your nice 30-inch monitor without having to plug in a cable dangling all over the desk. The specific technology for wireless connectivity to a monitor is called DisplayPort that drives 4K x 2K monitors (four times the resolution of an HD TV). And, you’ll be able to drive a large flat panel HD TV from your notebook wirelessly as well. We expect most WiGig vendors to offer Tri-band solutions that offers legacy Wi-Fi 802.11n, newer 802.11ac and the more advanced WiGig (802.11ad).
Along with Tri-band networking, WiGig solutions will provide wireless bus extensions as well as concurrent operation of network and I/O.
J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D. is Principal Analyst, Mobile & Wireless at MobileTrax L.L.C. As a nationally recognized industry authority, he focuses on monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in the mobile computing and wireless data communications industry in North America. Dr. Purdy is an “edge of network” analyst looking at devices, applications and services as well as wireless connectivity to those devices.
