Samsung Announces Wi-Fi Breakthrough Via 60 GHz Wi-Gig Standard

Samsung has announced a new speed breakthrough for Wi-Fi equipped devices by confirming a new benchmark of 4.6 Gbps using the 60GHz Wi-Gig standard. It is five times faster than the existing peak 802.11ac Wi-Fi speeds of 866 Mbps and will be released under the 802.11 ad standard when commercially launched beginning next year. Wi-Gig will be focused on short-range, high-speed data transfer as well as constant high-throughput applications, such as home automation and the Internet Of Things/”smart home” products.

Samsung claims the technology will let users with Wi-Gig equipped devices transfer a 1 GB movie between devices in less than three seconds, and uncompressed HD videos can be streamed from mobile devices to TVs in real time without delay. Samsung plans to commercialize the technology as early as next year in a variety of devices along with other chipset makers such as Qualcomm.

The Wi-Gig standard had previously struggled to gain acceptance in the industry owing to the difficulty of commercializing the underlying technology because of the limitations present in using such a high radio frequency for high-speed data transfer, such as requiring line of sight for best performance, and specialized antenna design that would have previously required expensive packaging and chipset/antenna designs.

Samsung now claims that by leveraging millimeter-wave circuit design, high performance modem technologies, and developing a wide-coverage beam-forming antenna, it was able to produce commercial-grade high-performance 60 GHz technology. The first devices to feature Wi-Gig are expected to be released next year and will mainly consist of smartphones before being expanded to other devices in the future.