Wireless Gigabit Alliance Announcement Could Shake Up Wireless HD Video Market

For a market that is just emerging, there is a great deal going on with wireless HD video technologies. UWB Chip companies targeting this market, including Tzero Technologies and Radiospire Networks, are closing their doors. Within 802.11n, start-ups like Celeno, Quantenna, Ruckus and Cavium are battling with established Wi-Fi players to move that technology into the HD space. And there are start-ups such as SiBeam and AMIMON launching new multi-Gigabit wireless technologies into the CE space. On top of all this came an announcement today of yet another player in the wireless HD video space: the Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance.

The WiGig Alliance’s goal is to build a high data rate wireless network that will encompass PC, CE and mobile devices. Its purpose is to transmit the all consumer’s data today, whether large files in the PC cluster, or streamed video in the CE cluster, to anywhere in the home.

The WiGig Alliance intends to use 60GHz technology to accomplish their goal, more specifically a 9GHz band around 60GHz. Its advantages include high throughput capability, a sparsely used portion of the spectrum, which allows for little interference with other wireless technologies, and low latency, with no encoding necessary. They intend to avoid the physical interference issues inherent at high frequencies with beam forming technology and antenna diversity.

The WiGig Alliance’s mission is to create a 60GHz standard on a worldwide basis. Its goals include:

Ensuring a diverse set of semiconductor manufacturers, which has been a drawback of other high-bandwidth technologies that have emerged over the past few years.


Drive rapid adoption.


Ensure interoperability.


Co-exist with current wireless technologies.


The ultimate goal of the WiGig Alliance is that the technology is that it be “fast, universal and efficient”.

Charter members of the alliance include: Atheros, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, LG Electronics, Marvell, Microsoft, Mediatek, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung and Wilocity. The membership spans the technology world, and includes representatives of the CE, PC and mobile segments. With a number of Wi-Fi chip vendors in the membership, it seems logical that they would re-use elements of Wi-Fi technology, if possible.

The current goal of the organization is publication of the WiGig spec by the end of 2009, with interoperability testing beginning in 2010. The WiGig specification will include PHY and MAC chip technology as well as Protocol Application Layers, or implementation software.

The WiGig Alliance is an impressive organization -- on paper. The broad cross-section of established companies indicates that it’s an organization to be taken very seriously. However, the road to WiGig silicon in products on the market is a long way off, perhaps as long as two years. In the meantime, 60GHz silicon is currently available from SiBeam, and AMIMON also has a wireless HD transmission chip technology on the market.

Because of the limited range inherent in high frequency technologies, WiGig will presumably be an in-room technology, although they claim they wish to connect devices wirelessly throughout the home. 60GHz simply does not currently have the range to achieve whole-home transmission, and using WiGig technology alone to accomplish this will be a Herculean task, likely requiring the use of some type of repeater technology in the home. If the plan is to create a whole-home network with a combination of 60GHz and Wi-Fi, it seems more likely to succeed, and perhaps explains the presence of Wi-Fi chip vendors in the Alliance.

Details of the new report, table of contents and ordering information can be found on Electronics.ca Publications' web site. View the report: http://www.electronics.ca/publications/products/Wireless-HD-Video-Technologies-2009%3A-WHDI%2C-WirelessHD%2C-802.11n%2C-and-UWB-All-Test-the-Waters.html

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This release was published on openPR.