Fastest Wi-Fi ever is almost ready for real-world use

In a quiet suite removed from the insanity of the Consumer Electronics Show expo floor, a company aiming to build the fastest Wi-Fi chips in the world demonstrated its vision of wireless technology's future. On one desk, a laptop powered a two-monitor setup without any wires. At another, a tablet playing an accelerometer-based racing game mirrors its screen in high definition to another monitor.

Across the room, a computer quickly transfers a 3GB file from a wireless router with built-in storage.

The suite was set up in the Las Vegas Hotel by Wilocity, a chip company specializing in wireless products using 60GHz transmissions, which are far faster than traditional Wi-Fi. Avoiding the show floor is a good idea if you're worried about Internet connectivity, because thousands of vendors are clogging the pipes. But that's not why Wilocity was here—they'd be able to perform the demo even in the busiest parts of CES without interference because they're not relying on the congested bands used by regular Wi-Fi.

“I don't think we'd have an issue with air congestion,” said director of product marketing Teresa Liou. “We're just here because it'sm quieter and less hectic than being on the show floor.”

Faster than a speeding bullet, too weak to pass through walls

Traditional Wi-Fi using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands is crossing the gigabit per second mark with the 802.11ac standard. Wilocity is one of the main proponents of the even faster WiGig (or “wireless gigabit”), which can theoretically hit speeds of up to 7Gbps, with the downside of using frequencies that are easily blocked by walls. Even thin cubicle walls may block signals, Wilocity acknowledged. (See: 7Gbps wireless transfers and streaming, no router required.) It's possible the next wireless router you buy will use the 60GHz frequency as well as the lower ones typically used in Wi-Fi, allowing for incredibly fast performance when you're within the same room as the router and normal performance when you're in a different room.

Wilocity's current chips hit a maximum throughput of 4.6Gbps, putting wireless speeds roughly on par with USB 3.0. Tri-band routers, wireless storage devices, and docking stations that facilitate wireless connections between mobile devices and monitors were all showcased in the Wilocity suite.

These were just prototype devices, since shipping products have mostly not yet hit the market. A Dell Latitude 6430u Ultrabook is thus far the only product using a Wilocity chip that you can buy. But WiGig isn't really a selling point for this laptop today, because there's no way to take advantage of it until there are companion products like docking stations or routers. Liou said Dell is planning a bundle to pair the Ultrabook with another WiGig-enabled product, but otherwise Wilocity couldn't say when further products will hit the market.

WiGig builds on top of the just-completed 802.11ad wireless standard. Wilocity's first-generation chip with 802.11ad can be used in computers and docking stations that connect devices to monitors, keyboards, and mice, but the chip can't be used in wireless routers.

A second-generation chip with router support was announced by Wilocity and Qualcomm at CES this week. The chip combines 802.11ad with 802.11ac, the successor to 11n.

That way, when WiGig products have to fall back to 2.4GHz or 5GHz transmissions, they'll at least be getting the best speeds that regular Wi-Fi offers. The chip will be sampled to vendors within a few months, and Wilocity is working with Marvell on tri-band chips as well, Liou noted.

Since no tablets with a WiGig chip are commercially available, Wilocity installed one of its chips into a Samsung Windows 8 tablet for purposes of the demo. The routers, wireless storage devices, and docking stations shown off by Wilocity were also prototypes made in conjunction with original design manufacturers like AzureWave.

Wilocity wanted to dispel any notion that WiGig requires users to keep devices stationary because of the limitations in 60GHz frequencies. To do that, they demonstrated streaming video from a laptop to a monitor while spinning the laptop around in circles. WiGig compensates for the movement with beamforming technology, which helps direct wireless signals.

“It finds the best path every time. It reflects off the walls,” Wilocity hardware engineer Vineeth Alva said.

Jon BrodkinAt the same time, walls are real obstacles to those 60GHz waves. When devices are in range, WiGig can enable every type of use case that regular Wi-Fi can, including connecting to the Internet, but falls back to slower 2.4GHz or 5GHz transmissions when the 60GHz connection is broken.

Wilocity had routers with network-attached storage placed strategically on the ceiling to allow a good path to WiGig-enabled devices. In one demo, a Wilocity engineer transferred a 3GB file from the NAS to a computer at rates of 1.2Gbps. That's slower than the theoretical peak of Wilocity chips- Alva blamed the application layer and perhaps hardware bottlenecks unrelated to the chip itself. Still, it's fast, and the file transfer zoomed ceaselessly toward completion when in range of the router. But when the engineer stepped around a corner, the transfer fell back to normal Wi-Fi and slowed to a crawl.