IEEE 802.11ay wireless technology: Next-gen 60GHz WiFi

A new standard for 60GHz Wi-Fi goes beyond 802.11ad wireless speed & range

A new standard for high speed multi-gigabit WiFi is emerging.  Though products based on the IEEE 802.11ad (WiGig) standard have really only begun rolling out, an effort to deliver an enhancement called IEEE 802.11ay that promises to deliver faster and longer range Wi-Fi networks is gaining steam.

The up-coming 802.11ay is as an enhancement of 802.11ad in the unlicensed 60 GHz millimeter wave band of spectrum, and should be a natural upgrade. The upgrade will offer significant speed and range improvements.

IEEE 802.11ay 60GHz networking
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Technical Summary

802.11ay is a type of WLAN in the IEEE 802.11 set of WLANs. It will have a frequency of 60 GHz, a transmission rate of 20–40 Gbit/s and an extended transmission distance of 300–500 meters. It has also been noted that it is likely to have mechanisms for channel bonding and MU-MIMO technologies. It is expected to be released in 2017. 802.11ay will not be a new type of WLAN in the IEEE 802.11 set, but will simply be an improvement on 802.11ad.

Where 802.11ad uses a maximum of 2.16 GHz bandwidth, 802.11ay bonds four of those channels together for a maximum bandwidth of 8.64 GHz. MIMO is also added with a maximum of 4 streams. The link-rate per stream is 44Gbit/s, with four streams this goes up to 176Gbit/s. Higher order modulation is also added, probably up to 256-QAM.   802.11ay applications could include replacement for Ethernet and other cables within offices or homes, and provide backhaul connectivity outside for service providers.

What is the difference between ad and ay?

The 802.11ad standard was published in 2012 and the technology gives devices access to the unlicensed and relatively unclogged 60 GHz millimeter wave spectrum band for multimedia streaming, VR headset connectivity, computer-to-monitor wireless links and other apps that don’t require more than say 30 or 40 feet of unimpeded space. It has been adopted by chipmakers as well as vendors of routers, access points and other devices. The Wi-Fi Alliance runs a WiGig certification program for vendors, and the early 11ad gear on the market most commonly supports data transfer rates of 4.6Gbps – way faster than 802.11n and 11ac, but more limited in range and unable to penetrate solid objects.

The backwards compatible 802.11ay amendment to 802.11ad is designed to boost speeds several-fold. That initially would amount to a transmission rate of 20 to 30Gbps and a range of 33 to 100 feet with 11ay-to-11ay device setups, but once channel bonding, MIMO and other capabilities are exploited, you could be getting closer to 200Gbps and reaching distances approaching 1,000 feet, according to industry players.

11ay, as the specs are being developed, “is really allowing for a wider range of products than you’d get with ad, which has one set of data rates that everyone supports… ay has a lot more parameters to play with in channel bonding, MIMO and features at the MAC level to allow a far greater range of performance and products” according to one chipset vendor.

Other up-coming Fast WiFi standards: 802.11ax

IEEE 802.11ay 60GHz networking
IEEE 802.11ay 60GHz networking

Users should not confuse 802.11ay with 802.11ax, which will work in the 2.5 and 5 GHz bands.  The lower frequency bands for 11ax will penetrate walls.  11ay will not.

What will 802.11ay be used for?

It remains to be seen how soon the high speeds of 11ay will really be needed for internal uses, as 802.11ac — including Wave 2 products — are already pretty robust. But experts say that if 11ad doesn’t quite do it for you given its distance limitations, “11ay will finally be the technology that would let you snip that Ethernet cord – you no longer have to run Ethernet cables to everyone’s desk… there’s enough wireless bandwidth in ay.”

Many are enthusiastic about 802.1ay’s potential as a fixed point-to-point or point-to-multipoint outdoor backhaul technology, especially in light of scaled back fiber rollout plans by providers like Google and Verizon in the face of extraordinary costs associated with such implementations. “I’m more bullish on using ad & ay for backhaul (instead of mesh) in the case of campus & city networks — provided that it has a useful range” according to one industry expert

But it’s possible that 802.11ay could find a role in internal mesh and backbone networks as well as for other uses such as providing connectivity to VR headsets, supporting server backups and handling cloud applications that require low latency. “I believe that eventually, there will be enterprise applications for this – but it’s probably a few years into the future, given that we will have 802.11ax fairly soon & because there’s still a lot of 5 GHz band available for that (and ac).

When will 802.11ay become reality?

The 802.11ay task group had its initial meeting in 2015 and the spec only hit the Draft 0.1 stage in January. Though it is expected to reach Draft 1.0 by July 2017, according to the IEEE task group. If that mark is hit, expect pre-standard 11ay products to start rolling out within a year of that time.

Who is behind 802.11ay?

The IEEE task force leading the 11ay work includes representatives from major equipment and chipsets vendors.  The group states its goal as this: “Task Group ay is expected to develop an amendment that defines standardized modifications to both the IEEE 802.11 physical layers (PHY) and the IEEE 802,11 medium access control layer (MAC) that enables at least one mode of operation capable of supporting a maximum throughput of at least 20 gigabits per second (measured at the MAC data service access point), while maintaining or improving the power efficiency per station. This amendment also defines operations for license-exempt bands above 45 GHz while ensuring backward compatibility and coexistence with legacy directional multi-gigabit stations (defined by IEEE 802.11ad-2012 amendment) operating in the same band.”

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5G – 5th Generation Mobile Wireless Networks

5G Mobile Wireless Technology

Preliminary details and information about the wireless technology being developed for 5th generation or 5G mobile wireless or cellular telecommunications systems

5G Mobile Networks
5G Mobile Wireless Technology

With the 4G telecommunications systems now starting to be deployed, eyes are looking towards the development of 5th generation or 5G technology and services.

Although the deployment of any wireless or cellular system takes many years, development of the 5G technology systems is being investigated. The new 5G technologies will need to be chosen developed and perfected to enable timely and reliable deployment.

The new 5th generation, 5G technology for cellular systems will probably start to come to fruition around 2020 with deployment following on afterwards.

5G mobile systems status

The current status of the 5G technology for cellular systems is very much in the early development stages. Very many companies are looking into the technologies that could be used to become part of the system. In addition to this a number of universities have set up 5G research units focussed on developing the technologies for 5G

In addition to this the standards bodies, particularly 3GPP are aware of the development but are not actively planning the 5G systems yet.

Many of the technologies to be used for 5G will start to appear in the systems used for 4G and then as the new 5G cellular system starts to formulate in a more concrete manner, they will be incorporated into the new 5G cellular system.

The major issue with 5G technology is that there is such an enormously wide variation in the requirements: superfast downloads to small data requirements for IoT than any one system will not be able to meet these needs. Accordingly a layer approach is likely to be adopted. As one commentator stated: 5G is not just a mobile technology. It is ubiquitous access to high & low data rate services.

5G cellular systems overview

5G Wireless Technologies
5G Wireless Technologies

As the different generations of cellular telecommunications have evolved, each one has brought its own improvements. The same will be true of 5G technology.

  • First generation, 1G:   These phones were analogue and were the first mobile or cellular phones to be used. Although revolutionary in their time they offered very low levels of spectrum efficiency and security.
  • Second generation, 2G:   These were based around digital technology and offered much better spectrum efficiency, security and new features such as text messages and low data rate communications.
  • Third generation, 3G:   The aim of this technology was to provide high speed data. The original technology was enhanced to allow data up to 14 Mbps and more.
  • Fourth generation, 4G:   This was an all-IP based technology capable of providing data rates up to 1 Gbps.

Any new 5th generation, 5G cellular technology needs to provide significant gains over previous systems to provide an adequate business case for mobile operators to invest in any new system.

Facilities that might be seen with 5G technology include far better levels of connectivity and coverage. The term World Wide Wireless Web, or WWWW is being coined for this.

For 5G technology to be able to achieve this, new methods of connecting will be required as one of the main drawbacks with previous generations is lack of coverage, dropped calls and low performance at cell edges. 5G technology will need to address this.

5G specifications

Although the standards bodies have not yet defined the parameters needed to meet a 5G performance level yet, other organisations have set their own aims, that may eventually influence the final specifications.

Typical parameters for a 5G standard may include:

SUGGESTED 5G WIRELESS PERFORMANCE
PARAMETER SUGGESTED PERFORMANCE
Network capacity 10 000 times capacity of current network
Peak data rate 10 Gbps
Cell edge data rate 100 Mbps
Latency < 1 ms

These are some of the ideas being put forwards for a 5G standard, but they are not accepted by any official bodies yet.

Current research

There are several key areas that are being investigated by research organisations. These include:

  • Millimeter-Wave technologies:   Using frequencies much higher in the frequency spectrum opens up more spectrum and also provides the possibility of having much wide channel bandwidth – possibly 1 – 2 GHz. However this poses new challenges for handset development where maximum frequencies of around 2 GHz and bandwidths of 10 – 20 MHz are currently in use. For 5G, frequencies of above 50GHz are being considered and this will present some real challenges in terms of the circuit design, the technology, and also the way the system is used as these frequencies do not travel as far and are absorbed almost completely by obstacles. 
  • Future PHY / MAC:   The new physical layer and MAC presents many new interesting possibilities in a number of areas:
    • Waveforms:   One key area of interest is that of the new waveforms that may be seen. OFDM has been used very successfully in 4G LTE as well as a number of other high data rate systems, but it does have some limitations in some circumstances. Formats being proposed include: GFDM, Generalised Frequency Division Multiplexing, as well as FBMC, Filter Bank Multi-Carrier, UFMC, Universal Filtered MultiCarrier. Each has its own advantages and limitations and it is possible that adaptive schemes may be employed, utilising different waveforms adaptively for the 5G mobile systems as the requirements dictate. This provides considerably more flexibility for 5G mobile communications. Read more about 5G waveforms
    • Multiple Access Schemes:   Again a variety of new access schemes are being investigated for 5G technology. Techniques including OFDMA, SCMA, NOMA, PDMA, MUSA and IDMA have all been mentioned. Read more about 5G multiple access schemes
    • Modulation:   Whilst PSK and QAM have provided excellent performance in terms of spectral efficiency, resilience and capacity, the major drawback is that of a high peak to average power ratio. Modulation schemes like APSK could provide advantages in some circumstances. Read more about 5G modulation schemes
  • Duplex methods:   There are several candidate forms of duplex that are being considered. Currently systems use either frequency division duplex, FDD or time division duplex, TDD. New possibilities are opening up for 5G including flexible duplex, where the time or frequencies allocated are variable according toth e load in either direction or a new scheme called division free duplex or single channel full duplex. This scheme for 5G would enable simultaneous transmission and reception on the same channel. Read more about 5G full duplex
  • Massive MIMO:   Although MIMO is being used in many applications from LTE to Wi-Fi, etc, the numbers of antennas is fairly limited -. Using microwave frequencies opens up the possibility of using many tens of antennas on a single equipment becomes a real possibility because of the antenna sizes and spacings in terms of a wavelength.
  • Dense networks   Reducing the size of cells provides a much more overall effective use of the available spectrum. Techniques to ensure that small cells in the macro-network and deployed as femtocells can operate satisfactorily are required.

Other 5G concepts

5G Mobile Networks
5G Mobile Networks

There are many new concepts that are being investigated and developed for the new 5th generation mobile system. Some of these include:

  • Pervasive networks :   This technology being considered for 5G cellular systems is where a user can concurrently be connected to several wireless access technologies and seamlessly move between them.
  • Group cooperative relay:   This is a technique that is being considered to make the high data rates available over a wider area of the cell. Currently data rates fall towards the cell edge where interference levels are higher and signal levels lower.
  • Cognitive radio technology:   If cognitive radio technology was used for 5th generation, 5G cellular systems, then it would enable the user equipment / handset to look at the radio landscape in which it is located and choose the optimum radio access network, modulation scheme and other parameters to configure itself to gain the best connection and optimum performance.
  • Wireless mesh networking and dynamic ad-hoc networking:   With the variety of different access schemes it will be possible to link to others nearby to provide ad-hoc wireless networks for much speedier data flows.
  • Smart antennas:   Another major element of any 5G cellular system will be that of smart antennas. Using these it will be possible to alter the beam direction to enable more direct communications and limit interference and increase overall cell capacity.

There are many new techniques and technologies that will be used in the new 5G cellular or mobile telecommunications system. These new 5G technologies are still being developed and the overall standards have not yet be defined. However as the required technologies develop, they will be incorporated into the new system which will be defined by the standards bodies over the coming years.

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OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing)

What is OFDM?   (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing)

OFDM: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, is a form of signal modulation that divides a high data rate modulating stream placing them onto many slowly modulated narrowband close-spaced subcarriers, and in this way is less sensitive to frequency selective fading.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing or OFDM is a modulation format that is being used for many of the latest wireless and telecommunications standards.

OFDM has been adopted in the Wi-Fi arena where the standards like 802.11a, 802.11n, 802.11ac and more. It has also been chosen for the cellular telecommunications standard LTE / LTE-A, and in addition to this it has been adopted by other standards such as WiMAX and many more.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing has also been adopted for a number of broadcast standards from DAB Digital Radio to the Digital Video Broadcast standards, DVB. It has also been adopted for other broadcast systems as well including Digital Radio Mondiale used for the long medium and short wave bands.

Although OFDM, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is more complicated than earlier forms of signal format, it provides some distinct advantages in terms of data transmission, especially where high data rates are needed along with relatively wide bandwidths.

What is OFDM? – The concept

OFDM is a form of multicarrier modulation. An OFDM signal consists of a number of closely spaced modulated carriers. When modulation of any form – voice, data, etc. is applied to a carrier, then sidebands spread out either side. It is necessary for a receiver to be able to receive the whole signal to be able to successfully demodulate the data. As a result when signals are transmitted close to one another they must be spaced so that the receiver can separate them using a filter and there must be a guard band between them. This is not the case with OFDM. Although the sidebands from each carrier overlap, they can still be received without the interference that might be expected because they are orthogonal to each another. This is achieved by having the carrier spacing equal to the reciprocal of the symbol period.

OFDM Signals

Traditional view of receiving signals carrying modulation

To see how OFDM works, it is necessary to look at the receiver. This acts as a bank of demodulators, translating each carrier down to DC. The resulting signal is integrated over the symbol period to regenerate the data from that carrier. The same demodulator also demodulates the other carriers. As the carrier spacing equal to the reciprocal of the symbol period means that they will have a whole number of cycles in the symbol period and their contribution will sum to zero – in other words there is no interference contribution.

OFDM Spectrum

One requirement of the OFDM transmitting and receiving systems is that they must be linear. Any non-linearity will cause interference between the carriers as a result of inter-modulation distortion. This will introduce unwanted signals that would cause interference and impair the orthogonality of the transmission.

In terms of the equipment to be used the high peak to average ratio of multi-carrier systems such as OFDM requires the RF final amplifier on the output of the transmitter to be able to handle the peaks whilst the average power is much lower and this leads to inefficiency. In some systems the peaks are limited. Although this introduces distortion that results in a higher level of data errors, the system can rely on the error correction to remove them.

Data on OFDM

The data to be transmitted on an OFDM signal is spread across the carriers of the signal, each carrier taking part of the payload. This reduces the data rate taken by each carrier. The lower data rate has the advantage that interference from reflections is much less critical. This is achieved by adding a guard band time or guard interval into the system. This ensures that the data is only sampled when the signal is stable and no new delayed signals arrive that would alter the timing and phase of the signal.

OFDM Guard Interval

The distribution of the data across a large number of carriers in the OFDM signal has some further advantages. Nulls caused by multi-path effects or interference on a given frequency only affect a small number of the carriers, the remaining ones being received correctly. By using error-coding techniques, which does mean adding further data to the transmitted signal, it enables many or all of the corrupted data to be reconstructed within the receiver. This can be done because the error correction code is transmitted in a different part of the signal.

OFDM advantages & disadvantages

OFDM advantages

OFDM has been used in many high data rate wireless systems because of the many advantages it provides.

  • Immunity to selective fading:   One of the main advantages of OFDM is that is more resistant to frequency selective fading than single carrier systems because it divides the overall channel into multiple narrowband signals that are affected individually as flat fading sub-channels.
  • Resilience to interference:   Interference appearing on a channel may be bandwidth limited and in this way will not affect all the sub-channels. This means that not all the data is lost.
  • Spectrum efficiency:   Using close-spaced overlapping sub-carriers, a significant OFDM advantage is that it makes efficient use of the available spectrum.
  • Resilient to ISI:   Another advantage of OFDM is that it is very resilient to inter-symbol and inter-frame interference. This results from the low data rate on each of the sub-channels.
  • Resilient to narrow-band effects:   Using adequate channel coding and interleaving it is possible to recover symbols lost due to the frequency selectivity of the channel and narrow band interference. Not all the data is lost.
  • Simpler channel equalisation:   One of the issues with CDMA systems was the complexity of the channel equalisation which had to be applied across the whole channel. An advantage of OFDM is that using multiple sub-channels, the channel equalization becomes much simpler.

OFDM disadvantages

Whilst OFDM has been widely used, there are still a few disadvantages to its use which need to be addressed when considering its use.

  • High peak to average power ratio:   An OFDM signal has a noise like amplitude variation and has a relatively high large dynamic range, or peak to average power ratio. This impacts the RF amplifier efficiency as the amplifiers need to be linear and accommodate the large amplitude variations and these factors mean the amplifier cannot operate with a high efficiency level.
  • Sensitive to carrier offset and drift:   Another disadvantage of OFDM is that is sensitive to carrier frequency offset and drift. Single carrier systems are less sensitive.

OFDM variants

There are several other variants of OFDM for which the initials are seen in the technical literature. These follow the basic format for OFDM, but have additional attributes or variations:

  • COFDM:   Coded Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. A form of OFDM where error correction coding is incorporated into the signal.
  • Flash OFDM:   This is a variant of OFDM that was developed by Flarion and it is a fast hopped form of OFDM. It uses multiple tones and fast hopping to spread signals over a given spectrum band.
  • OFDMA:   Orthogonal frequency division multiple access. A scheme used to provide a multiple access capability for applications such as cellular telecommunications when using OFDM technologies.
  • VOFDM:   Vector OFDM. This form of OFDM uses the concept of MIMO technology. It is being developed by CISCO Systems. MIMO stands for Multiple Input Multiple output and it uses multiple antennas to transmit and receive the signals so that multi-path effects can be utilised to enhance the signal reception and improve the transmission speeds that can be supported.
  • WOFDM:   Wideband OFDM. The concept of this form of OFDM is that it uses a degree of spacing between the channels that is large enough that any frequency errors between transmitter and receiver do not affect the performance. It is particularly applicable to Wi-Fi systems.

Each of these forms of OFDM utilise the same basic concept of using close spaced orthogonal carriers each carrying low data rate signals. During the demodulation phase the data is then combined to provide the complete signal.

OFDM, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing has gained a significant presence in the wireless market place. The combination of high data capacity, high spectral efficiency, and its resilience to interference as a result of multi-path effects means that it is ideal for the high data applications that have become a major factor in today’s communications scene.

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Gigabit Wireless Technologies

Gigabit Wireless Technologies

Which technologies can we consider for a modern Gigabit Wireless Network?

Building a Gigabit Wireless Network
Building a Gigabit Wireless Network

Building a modern Gigabit Wireless Network will require choosing the appropriate technology for the precise network requirements.  With wireless, there is no “magic technology” or “one size fits all” approach – a successful network deployment will consider which technologies are best suited

Choosing the correct technology for a Gigabit Wireless Network is essential to ensure you have the very best throughput, capacity and network uptime.

Ask our team of experts who will be delighted to assist in designing an choosing exactly the right products and solutions to meet your needs

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Welcome to Gigabit-Wireless.com!

Welcome to Gigabit-Wireless.com

Welcome – to the informational site for Gigabit Wireless Networking.  We consider the available technologies for Gigabit Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks including:

Welcome to Gigabit-Wireless.com
Welcome to Gigabit-Wireless.com

Feel welcome to read our site and find out more about building modern, reliable and scalable Gigabit Wireless Networks for Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (Wi-Man), 4G/LTE backhaul networks, Small Cell Backhaul, Corporate Networks and Campus and CCTV wireless networks.

We include technology introduction papers as well as usage cases to guide users in the very latest in Gigabit Wireless technology and deployment.  Modern wireless products can reach 10Gbps or higher capacity.

Applications for Wireless

Welcome - Gigabit Wireless
Gigabit Wireless Technology

Gigabit Wireless networks are used in a wide range of applications which include

  • Safe Cities
  • Smart Cities
  • 4G/LTE Backhaul Networks
  • Broadband Wireless
  • Last Mile Networks
  • Campus Sites
  • Corporate Networks
  • Education networks
  • Metro WiFi
  • Security and CCTV

If you are considering a wireless network with 10Gbps or higher capacity, please ask our team of experts who will be delighted to assist:

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