Next-Gen Wi-Fi, WiGig, Schedules Testing for Fourth Quarter

Products based upon the future of Wi-Fi technology, WiGig, should be due sometime next year, based on interoperability testing that will begin in the fourth quarter.

WiGig has already published its 1.0 specification. But Ali Sadri, president of the WiGig Alliance, said that to his knowledge, no manufacturer had yet manufactured products based upon it,as they had preferred to wait for the version 1.1 spec, which has now been published.

In addition, a WiGig Bus Extension has been published, enabling wireless peer-to-peer syncing between devices without the need for a PC. A WiGig Display Extension has also been defined, so that WiGig devices can connect to TVs and other displays.

Interoperability testing, as the name suggests, will connect devices and WiGig radios to one another to ensure that they can talk to one another and connect. The WiGig board of directors includes Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Dell, Toshiba, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung, and Qualcomm, among others.

What is WiGig?

What is WiGig? Increasingly, it looks like the future of wireless technology.

In late 2009, the WiGig Alliance finalized its technology, paving the way for throughput of between 6 and 7 Gbits/sec, ten times faster than today's 802.11n devices. But the WiGig protocol uses the 60-GHz spectrum, far away from the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz frequencies used by the current generation of 802.11a/b/g/n devices.

But it's not a competitor to Wi-Fi. In May 2010, , as both a next-generation wireless networking technology and a replacement for HDMI cables.

SiBeam, the technology behind the WirelessHD consortium, said that it had joined the WiGig Alliance as well, and developed a hybrid WirelessHD/WiGig chip.

Use cases include instant wireless syncing, wireless display, cordless computing, and Internet access. According to Sadri, there's no reason that a notebook computer could not be manufactured with absolutely no connectors, using a power charging mat and various combinations of wireless technologies for I/O.

Sadri said that WiGig has joined HDMI Licensing as well as its collaboration with VESA, for wireless HDMI and wireless DisplayPort certification. The technology should be available during the second half of 2011, or abut August, he said.