WiGig Offers 7Gbps Wireless Standard To Wi-Fi

The WiGig industry group has put the finishing touches on a standard for 7Gbps communications over wireless, and promised that products will appear by the end of 2010.

the group, which formed in May, intends to use the unlicensed 60GHz band to let devices communicate at high speeds, and will use the higher-layer protocols of Wi-Fi , so the new technology can be introduced without a big change to existing products.

“This will be a third band for Wi-Fi,” said Jason Trachewsky, Broadcom’s representative to the WiGig group. “The MAC layer will be familiar to anyone who understands Wi-Fi, and we want it to support the same types of app and reuse as much software as possible.”

Despite earlier fears that 60GHz signals would have a short range, Trachewsky assured eWEEK Europe ethat the WiGig standard would work over more than 10m, making it practical for moving high definition video around in living rooms.

The specification includes both low-power and high-performance versions, and will have a protocol-adaption layer to operate with existing devices. The specification could be fast-tracked into existing standards groups such as the IEEE’s 802 group but that is a decision for those groups, said Trachewsky.

The WiGig specification looks like taking the place of the ultrawideband (UWB) technology which has been looking moribund lately, although this year has seen the appearance of actual UWB devices such as the Leyio storage device.

The WiGig group also announced new members, including silicon specialists, AMD and Nvidia.