Get ready for 5Gbps Wi-Fi

Stuart Corner
Monday, 10 May 2010 16:18

Your IT - Home IT

The Wi-Fi Alliance has teamed up with the WiGig Alliance to develop Wi-Fi systems that will deliver multigigabit per second throughput in the 60GHz band.

The WiGig Alliance is one of two industry groups promoting 60GHz wireless LAN technologies and will  work with the Wi-Fi Alliance to develop a certification programme supporting Wi-Fi operation in the 60GHz band.

The two organisations say that a significant portion, if not all, of these devices are expected to also support traditional Wi-Fi networking at lower speeds in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands.

Wi-Fi Alliance CEO, Edgar Figueroa, said: "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 programme for 60GHz wireless."

Dr Ali Sadri, president and chairman of the WiGig Alliance, added: "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. We are happy to work with the Wi-Fi Alliance to extend multi-gigabit capabilities to the Wi-Fi technology portfolio."

The WiGig specification also defines procedures to enable WiGig compliant devices to hand over sessions to operate in the 2.4 or 5 GHz band. It is expected that a new class of tri-band Wi-Fi Certified devices will offer multi-gigabit wireless speeds while helping to ensure backward compatibility.

Market research firm ABI Research in April issued a report predicting a market for two million 60GHz chipsets by 2015, but NICTA, which has a lead in 60GHz wireless chipset development expects the market to be much bigger.

The WiGig alliance is one of two rival bodies promoting 60GHz technology. The other,  WirelessHD is ahead in commercialisation, but in the long term the WiGig Alliance is expected to win the day.