WiGig Teams Up With VESA For Wireless Display Standard

The Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance has signed a deal with a leading video standards body, which could let smartphone connect to HD screens without having to plug in any wires.

WiGig has been defining Gigabit-speed wireless links for computers peripherals and consumer equipment, using short-range 60GHz radio freqencies for the last two years. It has signed a deal with the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), which has been defining display standards since SVGA in 1989, to add multi-gigabit wireless capabilities to VESA’s DisplayPort standard.

Essentially what this means is that in the future, devices such as smartphones or computers, could be connected to a HD television, monitor, or projector, but without wires.

Wireless Displays

The trend nowadays is for consumers to be able to view their content anywhere and anytime. For example, the long awaited Nokia N8 which finally began shipping in late September, offers users the ability to record HD movies thanks to its 12 megapixel camera, and the ability to play them back on a television, but currently this only be done via an HDMI cable and not wirelessly.

“The WiGig-VESA collaboration will deliver a wireless display capability with image quality and I/O experience equal to that of wired interfaces,” WiGig said. “This agreement will spur the development of a new ecosystem consisting of interoperable wireless display products, providing an effective wireless alternative to cables, docking stations and adapters.”

A certification program for wireless DisplayPort products will be developed in parallel.

“This builds on previous announcements by the WiGig alliance,” said VESA chairman Bruce Montag, speaking to eWEEK Europe UK. Montag is also a board member of the WiGig Alliance.

Winning Receipe

“We looked to develop a program for the certification for wireless display connections, and WiGig is an ideal basis to do that,” said Montag. “DisplayPort provides the multi-gigabit bandwidth and is packet based and allows for bidirectional data connections. It also supports USB connections, so really WiGig does it all: Wi-Fi at multi-gigabit speeds, wireless USB, and wireless DisplayPort.”

WiGig’s technology is made up of a triband radio that operates over the 60GHz spectrum. For out of sight connections, beam forming and beam steering is needed.

There will be a couple of years before the technology reaches consumers’ hands and pockets, said Montag: “It is up to each manufacturer’s roadmap, but in general we should start see this capability sometime in the 2012 time frame.”

The benefits also go beyond HD TV signals to the mundane needs of ordinary device synching, Montag added: “The advantage of this technology is that it is a mobility enabler. Today a smartphone needs a USB cable for synching, but this technology allows everything to done wirelessly with no cables. This includes docking, device to device data transfer, or simply the ability to also take advantage of other display capabilities to quickly connect to a TV or projector, without having to connect a cable.”

“It really is a winning receipe and we are continuing to gain momentum,” he told eWEEK Europe UK.

The WiGig Alliance has announced the completion of the WiGig version 1.0 A/V and I/O protocol adaptation layer (PAL) specifications. The specifications will be published in early 2011.

60GHz Push

The WiGig Alliance was formed to unify the next generation of multi-gigabit wireless products by encouraging the adoption and widespread use of 60GHz wireless technology worldwide.

Back in May this year the WiGig Alliance signed a partnership deal with the Wi-Fi Alliance, in order to encourage the development of products supporting 60 GHz technology. The IEEE 802.11ad working group which is one of two working towards Gigabit Wi-Fi, has agreed to use WiGig’s 60GHz technology.