WiFi Alliance and Wireless Gigabit Alliance form coalition

WIRELESS NETWORKING GROUPS the WiFi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance have announced a cooperation agreement for multi-gigabit wireless networking.

Under the deal the WiFi Alliance and the WiGig Alliance will share technology specifications for the development of a next-generation WiFi Alliance certification program supporting WiFi operation in the 60GHz frequency band.

The big idea is that this will speed up the development of products supporting 60GHz technology.

The alliance wants device connectivity in the 60GHz band to complement the current family of WiFi technologies.

Targeted primarily for applications that require gigabit speeds, 60GHz products are expected to be used in a wide range of high performance devices.

Most of these will also support WiFi networking in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

WiFi Alliance chief executive Edgar Figueroa said that 60 Hz device connectivity will be an exciting enhancement to the capabilities of today's WiFi technologies.

Ali Sadri, president and chairman of the WiGig Alliance said that now that the specification is completed it is time get it all working.

The WiGig specification covers data transfer rates measured in gigabits rather than megabits and supports a new range of applications and usages.

The specification also defines procedures to enable WiGig-compliant devices to hand over sessions to operate in the either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz band.

It is expected that a new class of tri-band WiFi devices will offer multi-gigabit wireless speeds while making sure it all continues to work with older gear. µ