A new technology called WiGig that provides higher WiFi speeds is coming soon for the smartphones and laptops. Till now even the WiFi signal is strong, and we are near to the wireless router we are getting a limited amount of bandwidth through the WiFi chips embedded in our smartphones and laptops.
WiGig is the new brand established by the Wi-Fi alliance for the 802.11ad standard. It operates in the unlicensed 60GHz frequency range and promises data transmission rates up to 7Gbps. Real-world throughput will likely be slower, but theoretically—using different modulation and beam-forming techniques—WiGig could yield speeds of up to 25Gbps. That gives a whole new meaning to the term “blazing fast.”
How fast is WiGig? According to Wilocity—a company that manufactures 60GHZ chips used for WiGig—it can transfer 1000 photos between notebooks in five seconds. Uploading a two-minute HD video recording from a camcorder takes about a minute on a standard 802.11n Wi-Fi network, but would take a mere three seconds over WiGig. Downloading a 1080p HD movie would take three minutes instead of the hour it consumes over 802.11n.
Of course, 802.11n is no longer the king of the hill for Wi-Fi networks. We now have the nascent 802.11ac standard, which is significantly faster than 802.11n, and yet still much, much slower than the 802.11ad WiGig technology. The 802.11ac standard was dubbed “Gigabit Wi-Fi,” and is theoretically capable of gigabit-per-second transmission, but the real-world speed achieved from a single device is generally about half that (500Mbps).
Everything seems great, but there is a significant limitation with the WiGig technology. it can provide higher speeds only up to 10 meters distance from the WiFi router. That means you must be in the same room where WiFi router is located to get higher speeds.
For specific use cases, WiGig will be awesome. It will compete with other technologies like WirelessHD (which also operates in the 60GHz range) as a standard for wirelessly transmitting audio and video from a tablet or game console to a TV, or from an audio system to speakers. It will be great for living room entertainment because it can free you from the ugly tangle of wires running here and there. The advantage WiGig has over WirelessHD is that it’s at least possible to create a chip capable of delivering Wi-Fi and WiGig from the same device—enabling technology that can seamlessly switch between 802.11ac and 802.11ad so you can take advantage of WiGig while you’re in range and drop back to 802.11ac Wi-Fi when you leave the room.
Even though the range is the major drawback for the latest WiFi technology, it will be more comfortable for those who have higher bandwidth requirement for 4K video streaming and VR content. The devices which support WiGig comes with 802.11ad standard. If you find the term on any wireless device, that means it supports the latest WiGig technology.
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