60GHz Uber-WiFi Proposed By New WiGig Group

judgecorp writes "A new vendor group has promised a Gigabit wireless specification by the end of this year. The Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) spec is apparently 80 percent done and, since it is aimed at high-definition TV, it has to go at more than 3Gbps. There's around 7GHz of spectrum freely available in the 60GHz band, so it's technically feasible, and with all the major Wi-Fi silicon vendors on board (as well as Microsoft, Dell, Nokia and others) WiGig looks to have the political muscle too. They should be aware of the Sibeam-led WirelessHD group, though, already in the 60GHz space, and Ultrawideband (UWB) is not dead, as there are actual, real UWB products."

Comments

I'm confused...

[Max Romantschuk]

Having work experience with HD streams, I can verify that with modern h.264 compression you can easily fit a 720p HD stream in under 10Mbps, with acceptable quality.

Aimed at HD video? Can't we just call it faster? ;)

Re:I'm confused...

[wjh31]

accptable quality at 720p is one thing, but excellent quality at 1080p is another

Re:I'm confused...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Security for the user, probably no more than ordinary wi-fi. Security against the user? Well, if this is designed to transport "premium content" you don't even have to guess.

Re:I'm confused...

[Andy Dodd]

It means that there is a 7 GHz wide range of frequencies that is free somewhere around 60 GHz.

e.g. 60-67 might be a possibility, or it might be 57-64.

It's easier to use 7 GHz of spectrum at 60 GHz than 7 GHz of spectrum centered at 10, because the range is a lower percentage of the center frequency of the range.

That said, the range at 60 GHz is going to be insanely short.

60GHz is available because its almost useless

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be a VERY short range technology. Oxygen absorbed everything at 60GHz. This was actually classified secret for a long time - in the pre-encryption days, all sensitive wireless communication occurred at this frequency because even a very high powered antenna only has a range of a couple miles. You combine that with a directional antenna, and you can be almost certain no one is listening in.

Re:60GHz is available because its almost useless

[MobyDisk]

There's a way around that. If you place another material between the transmitter and the receiver, so that there is a path with no oxygen on it, then there will be very little signal degradation. I recommend something like a thin strip of aluminum or copper, insulated with some non-conductive material (which can also act as a ground between the transmitter and receiver).

Re:60GHz is available because its almost useless

[adolf]

Oh, no. It's far worse than that: It hardly works at all.

At work, we recently tried, and failed, to properly align a 58GHz wireless gigabit link. Looked like a good installation; clear Fresnel zone, no obviously destructive reflective surfaces, good mounting at one end (we substantially improved the mount at the other). The hardware looked good (made by Gigalink, now Proxim). Very short range - literally, across the street, which (since the radios were made for short haul) was right near the middle of the specifications on the radios. Simple antenna; looked like it was just a feedhorn covered by a radome.

As far as I can tell, it's nearly impossible to properly align these things. The wavelength is so bloody short that a misalignment of less than 1MM seems to fuck up the whole works. And it's not sufficient to just have the antennas pointed toward eachother; they have to be aligned on exactly parallel planes.

So anyway, we'd align it. And then it'd get cold out. And then it wouldn't work. Presumably, the buildings and steel mounts change shape sufficiently with the difference in temperature to just ruin everything.

Several more service calls later, and we'd given up on it.

I'm not exactly unskilled at these sorts of things. Back in the day, I used to install Primestar. I got good enough at alignment that I could set a pole in concrete, good and plumb. I'd pre-set the elevation and and the polarity of the LNB. After having a glance at my compass, I'd just put the dish on the pole and tighten it down, and then go on inside the house without ever checking the satellite meter. Chances were good that by the time I got inside, the receiver was all sync'd up and ready to go, with good RSSI values...and with no adjustment needed.

This 58GHz shit, at least as implemented by Gigalink, though: What a fucking abomination. If what WiGig proposes is anything similar in terms of pain, I can easily wait the rest of my life without it and never, ever miss it.

Re:60GHz is available because its almost useless

[Five Bucks!]

That's no antenna...

Re:60GHz is available because its almost useless

[drmofe]

You must be incompetent. I have a 60GHz Bridgewave unit working in my network with 100% uptime over 18 months at 100Mbps. Alignment is not easy - you are trying to get two 1 degree beamwidths lined up, so you do need to know what you are doing. In my case, the alignment is over 800m, it took 30 minutes to dial it in and once locked down, performance is flawless. Don't try operating one of these in a high rainfall environment though, the absorption will kill performance over anything but very short range.

Re:60GHz is available because its almost useless

[bugs2squash]

Indeed. I am able to line up my ~300THz link by eye. It prevents my garage door crushing people.

Re:60GHz is available because its almost useless

[drmofe]

"Competence" = "practised by a certified engineer". We did extensive testing before lighting the link up. We even threw a faulty unit back at Bridgewave due to a fault in a $1.70 part (in a $40K unit) that our testing picked up. (Hey, we still managed to line it up when the voltmeter was reading 0.3V instead of 3.3V) The point is that you probably had a duff unit, but also that engineering is more than just point and click - it also involves selecting, testing and verifying that your equipment is doing sane things. It doesn't imply that 60GHz is somehow unusable as a data transmission frequency. Quite the contrary, as others have pointed out.

Re:60GHz is available because its almost useless

[adolf]

Uh-huh. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

Wake me up after you've either failed similarly, or found something that I've done incompetently. K?

Your inane suffrage from the typical alpha-geek doctrine which prescribes that the first thing to do when told of the failure of others is best countered with the assertion that operator is at least incompetent is, at best, a positively useless behavioral pattern.

You didn't get the whole story, anyway - I was pissing and moaning on Slashdot, not trying to write a fucking novel.

Here's the sequence of events:

1. Customer hires Company A to install several Gigalink spans. Company A is certified to do so. Links all work at gigabit speeds with low latency and no significant packet loss. Everything works fine for several months.
2. It gets cold out.
3. 2 of 3 links stop working most of the time, especially at night, unless it's warm out.
4. Company A turns out to be clueless and unhelpful, despite their paper "competence."
5. Customer asks Company B, who they've used for radio work for tens of years, including other WWAN projects, if they can help.
6. Company B (that's us, by the way) says "Sure, we'll give it a shot. No promises."
7. Try. Realigning appears to succeed.
8. Fail. Cold out again.
9. Try again when it is cold out, like -5F. Replace non-penetrating roof mount on bouncy snow-covered roof at one end of link with 3" sch. 80 pipe securely fastened to solid brick wall of elevator house on roof. Appear to succeed.
10. Fail. After a couple of heat cycles, things don't work anymore. Just like before.
11. Try. Let's line this thing up right, once and for all. Inspect radio's hardware for signs that thermal expansion might be somehow altering the alignment in a meaningful way, and grasp at all other available straws. Inspect other buildings for possible interference sources. Concoct and shoot down different scenarios including ice formation from flue gas condensation to power issues when furnace is running extensively. Find nothing.
12. Fail.
13. Customer calls manufacturer. Manufacturer suggests Company C to align things better.
14. Company C tries. Spends all day. Moves the pipe mount up as high as possible on wall. Manages insignificantly improved peak numbers vs. what we were getting.
15. Company C goes back to Chicago.
16. Company C fails. As soon as it gets cold out, link stops working.
17. Customer calls manufacturer. Manufacturer says "OK, send a pair of them to us and we'll test it here."
18. We install a temporary 5.8GHz link (at substantially lower speed) for Customer to use in the interim.
19. Customer sends a pair of Gigalink units back to Manufacturer.
20. Manufacturer calls customer. Says units work fine in their lab without any particular difficulty and are performing to specification.
21. ??? (nothing's budged since then, 5.8GHz link is still working fine, remaining 2 installed Gigalink spans also working fine now that the weather is nice and warm)
22. I conclude that 60GHz-ish stuff doesn't fucking work. It may be counter to a world of differing opinion, but this one is mine.

So, Oh Wise and Competent One, please tell me where I've gone wrong, other than the fact that I accepted the job to begin with. I beg this of you. Show me the error of my ways, oh great and powerful -- oops, I meant "competent" -- Oz!

Thanks! (And I promise not to look behind the curtain.)

Re:Scary energy levels?

[Brian Gordon]

Energy levels? Better go crawl under a rock to protect yourself from 600THz blue light.

WiGigroup?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been to that meeting and took a picture of the WiGig steering committee. Good times.

Re:Scary energy levels?

[Burkin]

Just add a few extra layers of foil to your tinfoil hat and you'll be fine.

"80% done?"

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) spec is apparently 80 percent done and, since it is aimed at . . .

. . . Duke Nukem Forever players, it will never see the light of day.

Re:Scary energy levels?

[644bd346996]

What are you worried about? It's not like we're talking about ionizing radiation, since 60Ghz is well below even visible wavelengths. And for LAN use, the necessary wattage will be far below the levels needed to cook somebody. (Consider that the Active Denial System at 95Ghz requires megawatts just to make you feel hot, and it concentrates it's energy in one direction, unlike a wlan.)

Generating dangerous amounts of omnidirectional microwave radiation requires the use of components that couldn't fit inside a laptop, let alone be powered by one.

Good luck with that

[bzzfzz]

Great if you don't want to go more than a few feet. The problems with walls, floors, and roofs, bad enough for WiFi at 2.4Ghz, are far more serious in the higher bands. Practical in-home, wireless HDTV video distribution will remain elusive for years. It's not just a matter of bandwidth. The performance of the network has to be consistent regardless of whether someone opens a door or stands in the hallway or you drop frames. And it has to be able to actually achieve HDTV rates consistently in most homes or buyers will get frustrated from bringing home stuff that doesn't work for them.

Re:Scary energy levels?

[Florian Weimer]

Anyone else worried by the potential adverse effects of a 60GHz Wi-Fi versus the current 2.4GHz - 5GHz range?

Car radar typically operates in the 60 GHz range, too, so you can be quite sure that the waves won't propagate through walls and other barriers.

In fact, those frequencies are a poor choice for comms applications because you need a repeater in every room, and outdoor applications will suffer when it's raining.

Proper frequency for the purpose

[Bruce Perens]

60 GHz is a great frequency for local communications. It is attenuated by passage through the air, in addition to the usual square-law attenuation over distance, and thus your LAN won't be interfering with everyone else's LAN and with long-distance wireless users in the band. Although the ISM band currently used for 802.11b, g, and n is sort of a garbage band, with microwave ovens and so on sharing the frequencies, it has long-range potential (wifi links in the hundreds of miles are possible by line of sight and big dishes) and thus should really be used for what it's suited for.

Re:Proper frequency for the purpose

[RazzleDazzle]

So maybe not full gigabit but there are wireless products that support higher bandwidth links at higher than 802.11 frequencies. For example check out Dragon Wave products. With directional antennas and line of sight you can go for miles and get decent bandwidth.

Sure you can

[LanMan04]

Sure you can. A good quality (not insane quality, but good) movie at 720p is typically encoded to fill a DVD5 (4.37GB)

4.37GB = 4474.88MB = 35799.04Mb

So we need to stuff 35799 megabits down a pipe in 2 hours or so.

2 hours = 120 minutes = 7200 seconds

35799/7200 = 4.97208 Mb/sec

So you need a sustained transfer rate of about 5 megabits per second to stream a 4.37GB movie in 2 hours.

Re:HDMI 1.3 supports 10 Gbps I believe

[sexconker]

Believe me, I want to support 48 bpp!
I'm so sick of fucking 16777216 colors. I need more, lots more, and a display that can actually render them!