Wi-Fi expected to exceed 1Gbps by 2012

14th December, 2009 by adina
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A major improvement to Wi-Fi standards due in two years is expected to be voted by IEEE, the first steps having already been made. The 802.11ac standard should be upgraded to 802.11a, making it able to support 80MHz and even 160MHz channels providing much more bandwidth than at present. This will be combined with an about ten percent increase in efficiency for modulation of the actual frequencies and should improve the theoretical speeds of transfer to an amount of 1Gbps or even more, which means three times and more than the actual 300Mbps provided now by the 802.11n.

The technology is not yet in the draft phase and debates only started seriously on November 10th. This is why its specifications are still subject to changes. The technology should however become usable in late 2011, as a draft standard, and should receive complete approval by December 2012.

Intermediate steps are on the way and the ratification of 802.11n earlier this year was one of them. Three, maybe four MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) data streams could significantly accelerate the theoretical speeds of 802.11n from the actual 300 Mbps on two streams to 450Mbps on three streams or, finally, to 600Mbps on four steams. Currently, client and router hardware, such as Apple’s fall 2009 Airport devices or Intel’s 5300 chipset already support three streams and do not need anything else but connecting to devices that can receive and send three streams themselves. It is not known yet if any Mac can support three streams.


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