A new wireless standard that outpaces 802.11n in speed by tenfold — but at a much shorter range — was approved by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance this week.
The Multi-Gigabit Wireless Specification or WiGig 1.0 works on the little used 60 GHz band and supports data transmissions of up to 7 Gbps. But the technology creates only a 10-meter range wireless network – much smaller than the 100-meter network enabled by 802.11n Wi-Fi.
The technology can, however, be used with beamforming to automatically switch over to Wi-Fi at the 10-meter border, extending to a 100-meter network with throughput of 600 megabits per second.
WiGig 1.0 will likely be used for home entertainment and will be built into PCs, TVs, cameras and mobile devices. The technology will enable users in the same house to watch multiple streams of video in different rooms. It is possible that the technology will be used to supplement 802.11n to provide video over WLAN in a multitenant environment, which could include universities and enterprise scenarios.
Devices using the standard are expected to be available in Q1 of 2010.