It’s no doubt that we all know what is WiFi. However, do you know WiGig?
Can you imagine how amazing that we can transfer the data of a DVD to our other devices in only about 15 seconds?
Now, WiGig can do!
Recently WiFi Alliance has announced that it supports WiGig. They also said that WiGig will become the new configuration selection of laptops and Smartphones in 2017.
Then, what is WiGig?
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) was a trade association that developed and promoted the adoption of multi-gigabit per second speed wireless communications technology operating over the unlicensed 60 GHz frequency band. The alliance was subsumed by the Wi-Fi Alliance in March 2013.
Now, this Alliance consists of the famous technology companies, including Cisco, Dell, Huawei Technologies, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, NEC, NVIDIA, etc.
The core WiGig technology is based on the IEEE 802.11ad wireless specification, which supports data transfer speeds of up to 7 Gbps by operating at a very high 60 GHz frequency, rather than the 2.4 or 5 GHz bands of your typical Wi-Fi router. This results in a speed that’s more than twenty times faster than the highest 802.11n connection rate.
The WiGig MAC and PHY Specification, version 1.1 includes the following capabilities:
☆ Supplements and extends the 802.11 Media Access Control (MAC) layer and is backward compatible with the IEEE 802.11 standard
☆ Support for beamforming, enabling robust communication at distances beyond 10 meters. The beams can move within the coverage area through modification of the transmission phase of individual antenna elements, which is called phase array antenna beamforming.
☆ Supports data transmission rates up to 7 Gbit/s — more than ten times faster than the highest 802.11n rate
☆ Physical layer enables low power and high performance WiGig devices, guaranteeing interoperability and communication at gigabit per second rates
☆ Protocol adaptation layers are being developed to support specific system interfaces including data buses for PC peripherals and display interfaces for HDTVs, monitors and projectors
☆ Widely used advanced security and power management for WiGig devices
The Differences between WiGig and WiFi
According to the name, Wigig and WiFi are similar. Actually, the function of WiGig is similar with WiFi’s too. However, WiGig supports faster wireless transfer speed than WiFi. It can support 7Gbps, which is ten times than WiFi. This speed makes us can transfer the data of a DVD to our other devices in only about 15 seconds.
According to the distance, we can find the disadvantage of WiGig. Although its speed is faster, but it is easy to be disturbed by walls, ceiling and other things. 7 Gbps is around three times faster than the best 802.11ac routers can do right now. However, in the real world, most current devices can only hit 600 Mbps or so. If you want use WiGig, you must essentially got to be in the same room as the router to benefit from such speeds. Of course, your smartphone or laptop would have to support the standard too, not just the router.
According to the technology, WiGig is a new technology from WiFi, an extension of 802.11. Simply speaking, we can use WiGig in a short distance but the network card will change to WiFi automatically when we leave the scope of WiGig signal. The distance of WiGig signal is ranged from 10m to 20m, which is suitable for customers at home.
Although the transfer distance of WiGig is short, the industry and consumers are still waiting on a much greater number of WiGig certified products to hit the market. Modems and products that support the technology are slowly starting to hit the market, and we’ll almost certainly confirm that:
WiGig is coming now!
