The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig), which promotes the use of 60 GHz wireless technology, announced the completion of its unified wireless specification, promising data transfer rates more than 10 times faster than today’s wireless LANs while offering backward compatibility with existing Wi‐Fi devices.
The WiGig version 1.0 specification includes the following key elements:
- Supports data transmission rates up to 7 Gbps — more than ten times faster than the highest 802.11n rate
- Supplements and extends the 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and is backward compatible with the IEEE 802.11 standard
- Physical layer enables both the low power and the high performance WiGig devices, guaranteeing interoperability and communication at gigabit rates
- Protocol adaptation layers are being developed to support specific system interfaces including data buses for PC peripherals and display interfaces for HDTVs, monitors and projectors
- Support for beamforming, enabling robust communication at distances beyond 10 meters
- Widely used advanced security and power management for WiGig devices.
The WiGig Alliance also announced new members, including NVIDIA, AMD, SK Telecom and TMC.
“When we launched the WiGig Alliance in May, we announced our plan to complete the industry’s first unified 60 GHz specification by Q4 2009, and we are proud to deliver on this promise to the industry,” said Dr. Ali Sadri, president and chairman of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. “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 disc players, digital cameras and many more.”http://wirelessgigabitalliance.org