The Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance announced that the latter will be allowed to build specs and standards to support Wi-Fi operation in the 60-GHz frequency band. Wi-Fi today operates in the 2.4-GHz and 5- GHz bands.
“Today’s Wi-Fi speeds are measured in the low hundreds of megabits per second,” says Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance. The 60-GHz band allows for significant boost in performance, so we are talking about speeds in the gigabits per second range.
Functionally, the move to 60 GHz could allow for speeds in the range of 1 gigabits per second to 6 gbps, compared to today’s theoretical maximum of 150 Mbps for 802.11n. This change could increase the speed of Wi-Fi tenfold.
“Wi-Fi in 60 GHz band could mean some compelling apps, such as those connecting your Blu-ray player to your TV or sharing uncompressed video in real time without any degradation,” says Figueroa.
60-GHz Wi-Fi could signal an end to wired Internet, but higher frequency waves mean a shorter range that doesn’t penetrate walls very well. The 60 GHz is like a beam of light you have to have line of sight but you can get multi-gigabit point-to point networking speeds with it, says Xavier Ortiz, an analyst at ABI Research.
Devices that can switch between current wireless standards and 60 GHz are expected to be available in two years.
Source: Wired
