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Craig Mathias

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An Unusual Path to 60 GHz. - But One That Just Might Work

Reversing the usual process means we get products sooner - even if they might not be "standard"

By Craig Mathias on Tue, 05/11/10 - 7:18pm.

. What's this?

I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the use of the unlicensed band at 60 GHz. for many years, based on the assumption that advances in radio, antenna, chip, and other related technologies would eventually enable cost-effective solutions here. And, indeed, with a few recent developments, it's now full speed ahead for 60 GHz. - although the process leading to what I'm sure will be very exciting products indeed (think: multi-gigabit throughput, at least over short distances) has become a bit convoluted.

The most important news is that the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) is now aligned with the Wi-Fi Alliance, meaning that WiGig's recently-issued spec will now form the basis of interoperability certification and testing from Wi-Fi. Nothing unusual going on here, except for one little detail: to this point, the Wi-Fi Alliance has based its work on the output, draft or final, of the IEEE 802.11 standards efforts. And there is such an effort, 802.11ad, working at this time to produce a standard for 60 GHz. WLANs, said work likely to wrap up around 2012 or so. So why jump the gun?

The value chain from concept to finished goods used to be technologies (bending the laws of physics to our will)/standards (formal definitions of interface points)/specifications (for interoperability certification)/products, but it's now (in this case, anyway) technologies/specifications/products/standards. Why? So as not to suffer the slow market development that resulted from the process required to create both the original 802.11 standard and especially 802.11n. Both of these efforts, which had to follow rigorous IEEE guidelines in order to achieve the credibility ultimately required of a true international standard, resulted in multi-year delays that reduced (one might argue deferred instead here) sales of higher-value (than current technologies) chips, modules, and systems. It's clear that the chip guys, who play a major role within WiGig, don't want this to happen again - they've got the technology, now, and want the revenue, also now. So it's a safe bet that 802.11ad will now reflect what WiGig has speced and Wi-Fi will certify. Ultimately, this is no big deal, but it's not business as usual, either. In fact, there's a real upside here in that we may be able to put our hot little hands on real 60 GHz. WLANs perhaps before the end of this year (40% probability, based on where we are with components right now) or early next year (60% probability). And there's a 100% probability that we'll be sending data through the air at gigabit or faster speeds next year, again well in advance of the standard. 60 GHz. leader SiBEAM already has a radio chip than can work with both WirelessHD and WiGig, the SB8110, so it can't be long now. And I don't think component prices will be an issue - 60 GHz. will be not only fast, but cheap as well.

Note also that we'll still see a fundamental schism between 60 GHz. video and WLAN applications and products, the former being the province of WirelessHD, and the latter in the hands of WiGig/Wi-Fi. This is fine - building a wireless HDMI replacement isn't a LAN application, and WirelessHD's data capabilities - also potentially multi-gigabit, BTW - are more akin to Bluetooth or "sync" functionality than a LAN, reflecting the 802.15.3c WPAN heritage of this technology. We'll still see battles between the compressed and uncompressed video camps, of course; such, however, has nothing to do with frequency bands. But on the WLAN side, the die is, I think, cast, albeit in a rather non-traditional manner.