Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1066130
12 I ICT TODAY suited than 2.4 and 5 GHz wireless technologies for consumer AV applications. These applications consist of primarily uncompressed HD video and gaming, wireless HDMI, and other wireless personal area networking (WPAN) operations. 60 GHz is not susceptible to the interferences of the lower bands and, due to its beam- forming capabilities, can use multiple data streams in the same spatial environment without interfering with itself. These specifications are now maintained and offered by the Wi-Fi Alliance and use the underlying specifications of 802.11ad. 802.11ah: Approved by the IEEE Task Group AH in October of 2016, 802.11ah was published in early 2017. This standard uses the ISM 902 to 928 MHz band and provides extended coverage range, less energy consumption, and increased data rates. It is meant to be an alternative to the current 802.15 standard (i.e., Bluetooth, Zigbee), which uses the higher 2.4 and 5.2 GHz bands. With the emergence of the internet of things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) networks, it is believed that the current Wi-Fi/Bluetooth architecture will not be able to scale. When the standard published in 2017, it prompted the manufacturing of some chipsets. It is mostly targeted at the industrial M2M world, probably displacing some ZigBee installations, and it shows great promise for residential and commercial applications as well. It is replacing Bluetooth/Wi-Fi and moving to an IPV6 format. The Wi-Fi Alliance has already branded their version and introduced it as HaLow ™ . It makes sense that a sub-GHz technology would be more efficient, but that may be another hurdle. The ISM band for 902 to 928 MHz is only available in North and South America, Greenland and some islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean, with some exceptions. ITU coordinates the global use of shared radio spectrum and divides the earth into three regions as shown in Figure 4. The Americas are Region 2, the only region that appears to have access to this band as an unlicensed ISM band. The rest of the world, except Antarctica, are Regions 1 and 3 where that frequency space is dedicated for other uses. It is not clear yet how this standard will be deployed in these two regions. WIRELESS TOMORROW The next big step in wireless LANs is 802.11ax. It is intended to be backward compatible with 802.11n and 802.11ac, with probable throughput improvement values of five to ten times. It is an active working group that recently passed Draft 3.0 by ballot. Draft 4.0 is being re-circulated with final specifications expected toward the end of 2019. In anticipation, some manufacturers are already building the chipsets and the Wi-Fi Alliance has announced that it will be marketed as Wi-Fi 6, a new naming convention to simplify consumer understanding. They have also renamed 802.11n and 802.11ac as Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 respectively. Licensed 70-80-90 GHz bands: Still in the millimeter wave space, licensed 70-80-90 GHz bands are being used when longer ranges are required. They must be licensed and frequency coordinated in the U.S. With the relatively small footprint they cover and the fact they are not widely deployed yet, licensing tends to be much easier than earlier microwave systems. These systems operate in the 71-76 GHz, 81- 86 GHz and 92-95 GHz bands and can utilize channels up to 500 MHz wide. Depending upon the rain zone and FIGURE 4: ITU global regions. Source, International Telecommunication Union.