Wi-Fi Alliance Rolls Out new Designation for Low-Power, Long-Range Wi-Fi
LAS VEGAS -- The Wi-Fi Alliance’s latest designation, HaLow, revealed Monday, will enable low-power connectivity for sensors and wearables in the IoT while extending Wi-Fi range in challenging environments, Wi-Fi Alliance Vice President-Marketing Kevin Robinson told us. The next-gen Wi-Fi standard, incorporating 802.11ah technology, will enable new use cases for smart home, connected car, digital healthcare and smart city environments, Robinson said.
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Wi-Fi HaLow, operating in the unlicensed 900 MHz RF frequency band, expands the Wi-Fi portfolio and is complementary to existing Wi-Fi standards, said Robinson. He cited wearables and sensors as power-sensitive devices that in the IoT “want to communicate back to the cloud” via Internet or to a smartphone. Using HaLow, those low-power devices could go for months or years on a single battery, said Robinson.
HaLow also offers “real-world” long-range connectivity, said Robinson, that could overcome limitations of existing Wi-Fi transmission. He envisioned a water sensor in a basement with concrete or brick construction that would impede the travel of traditional Wi-Fi signals to an access point across the house. Because of HaLow's sub-gigahertz frequency band, signals have better propagation characteristics that can penetrate walls and reach the access point to report a sump pump event, for example. In open air, HaLow offers even more range, said Robinson, and it's expected to be used for smart meters on city streets that can communicate to a payment system in another part of town.
HaLow can handle data throughput down to 150 kbps for sensors that are sending small amounts of data, or up to 18 Mbps for compressed video data from a security camera, said Ferguson. Because it can transmit small bits of data through obstructions, Robinson called HaLow a complement to 802.11ac, which delivers a more robust data rate that can handle HD video streams and multiple clients simultaneously.
Interoperability certification for Wi-Fi HaLow is expected to begin in 2018, but compatible products will hit the market before then following typical Wi-Fi cycles, said Robinson. “We fully expect you will see device vendors and silicon vendors talking about HaLow at CES this year, with products coming sometime after that,” Robinson said. The Wi-Fi certification stage is typically an “inflection point” market where mass-market adoption accelerates due to “interoperability assurances,” but individual vendors will bring out products in advance of 2018, he said. Some products will come out as “HaLow-only” depending on use case, said Robinson, while access points will roll out with multiple radios, including HaLow, to provide “seamless connectivity” from a HaLow device to the existing installed base of 6.8 billion Wi-Fi devices.
In a competitive IoT market, the alliance expects HaLow to stand out based on its Wi-Fi roots that include government and enterprise-grade WPA2 security, users' comfort level with setting up a Wi-Fi network and its native support for IP, said Robinson. Consumers are familiar with Wi-Fi and rely on it every day knowing products will work together, he said.
On potential interference from other products operating in the unlicensed 900-MHz frequency band, Robinson acknowledged that HaLow will contend with other devices in the shared spectrum. He said Wi-Fi has done “very well” dealing with interference issues in the 2.4- and 5 GHz bands and the same “coexistence mechanisms” will be included in Wi-Fi HaLow.