WiGig Completes Wireless Specification

A new robust wireless technology for the home appears slated to begin appearing in devices in 2011 after the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) announced on Thursday that it has completed its unified wireless specification. The 60-GHz technology will support transmission rates up to 7 Gbps.

It's not immediately clear exactly where WiGig will fit in the myriad of wireless schemes, some already in use like the many Wi-Fi flavors, or some still being developed like WirelessHD. However, the fact that WiGig is supported by many leading high-tech firms means it's likely to find its place, probably in home and small office networking where robust networks are required.

Ali Sadri, president and chairman of the WiGig Alliance, pointed to the most likely market when he said in a statement, "We're rapidly paving the way for the introduction of the next generation of high-performance wireless products -- PCs, mobile handsets, TVs and displays, Blu-ray players, digital cameras, and many more."

Prominent among WiGig's supporters is Intel, which spearheaded other wireless technologies like Wi-Fi and WiMax. Sadri said the specification will be ready for delivery to WiGig members next quarter and soon thereafter adopter companies will begin developing actual products for the 60-GHz unlicensed spectrum.

"By complementing Wi-Fi and enabling multigigabit speeds, the versatile specification is a very significant achievement on the road to the next generation of wireless LAN products," said Craig Mathias, a principal with the FarPoint Group, in a statement.

While the specification as written seems aimed at in-room use, support for beamforming in the spec could result in wide coverage, opening up the solution to whole-house coverage.

The WiGig alliance has worked with the IEEE 802.11 standard and has developed WiGig to be backward compatible with existing Wi-Fi technologies.

The WiGig alliance said protocol adaption layers are under development for the support of system interfaces like PC peripheral data buses and display interfaces.