6 ms·

Can we focus on longer range and penetration instead of higher bandwidth nobody needs at frequencies that require line of sight? What about the 900MHz band?

by akelly 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fhub 4y ago
Wi-Fi HaLow 802.11ah. 902–928 MHz in North-America, 863–868 MHz in Europe, 755–787 MHz in China. Pretty low bandwidth though. Mainly focussed on IoT. I'm following https://www.morsemicro.com/ https://www.morsemicro.com/ who is implementing it from the ground up. Some amazing talent there.
simondotau 4y ago
Longer range and better penetration means even more congestion in built-up areas. 2.4GHz is as low as you’d want to go in any application other than rural mansions.
- denimnerd42 4y ago
  yeah the switch to 5ghz was huge when i lived in an apartment. i had an ap in each room and i barely received any congestion in that spectrum because the walls blocked it all. i imagine it’s great for schools and businesses in the same way.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  I’ve lived in several plaster and lathe buildings and other houses that would've benefited from longer range WiFi
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    My house is solid brick walls throughout. My WiFi is awful in any room without an access point.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      We in wall access points (eg Unifis) are great for room coverage, and there are Ethernet ports on them too, so they provide a convenient switch too. However doing a whole house wouldn’t be cheap.
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        Unifis? Are they homeplugs? (Ethernet over Powerline) Homeplugs are awesome. Used them in Singapore due to concret walls everywhere which made Wifi basically useless. Had them in every room for Wifi + Ethernet.
        rejectfinite 4y ago
        > Unifis? Are they homeplugs? (Ethernet over Powerline) No, they are accesspoints > Homeplugs are awesome They CAN be awesome. Depends on the wireing. But if they work, they work well. I just had to replug mine every week or so but this weas a few years ago. I ethernet hardwire everything now as Im just in a small room.
    - formerly_proven 4y ago
      Brick walls don't block wifi that much - there's probably steel or concrete (or both) in your walls and floors. That kills wifi pretty good. In a traditional brick house you can get wifi coverage on 2.4 GHz, and for the most part 5 GHz as well, into the last nook and cranny with a single, well-placed AP.
      - cameronh90 4y ago
        There's definitely no steel in my house, however there is lime plaster which is somewhat similar to concrete. I can get 2.4GHz fine, but it's pretty slow for a 1Gb/s connection. 5GHz only within the room of the AP in general (or the room immediately above/below, because the floors are just wood).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- varenc 4y ago
  Shouldn't we be able to trade off the higher speed for less conflict by having each client spend less time taking up air space? Like if we can achieve 5GBps, than presumably there could be dozens of networks operating at ~200MBps speeds all sharing the same frequencies.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    Wi-Fi 6 and newer opted for OFDMA instead of TDMA but it achieves the same goal of splitting the bandwidth dynamically based on client workload. OFDMA isn't coordinated over multiple APs though.
vlan0 4y ago
Do you have use cases in mind? Unfortunately, you’re not going to get long range without more interference. Which makes it hard to deploy with any sort of density.
- akelly 4y ago
  I have two APs in my house and get zero reception in the bathroom that's next to one of the APs because of the tiled lath and plaster walls. Same with the kitchen in my grandparents house.
aidenn0 4y ago
The 5GHz band is the only usable band where I live because the 2.4GHz bnd has longer range and better penetration. There are at least 5 visible networks on each of the 3 non-overlapping 2.4GHz channels from any given point in my house, and if I'm in a corner of the house (my AP is centrally located) there are more.
teleforce 4y ago
Personally my group is working on a new reliable wireless based on wireless polarization of the EM waves with collaboration with Hitachi at 900 Mhz. The initial results are very promising [1]. It's already proposed to the IEEE but perhaps at the time the timing is not right, and it's not been very well received [2]. Recently our group have improved on the wireless system and the bandwidth is much better with MPSK rather the original BPSK. From simulation the improved wireless system is a few order of magnitude better than LoRa in term of BER performance with significantly improved range especially in multi-path environment. We are now trying to improve further with additional channel coding and more efficient modulation for better efficiency in real world application with linear power amplifier (PA). Really hope this new polarization based wireless technology can get into the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 and 6G networks, to significantly improve wireless communication reliability for consumer and industry. [1] Successful prototyping of a rotating polarized wave receiver for high-quality wireless communication in manufacturing environments: https://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/month/2017/09/170911.html https://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/month/2017/09/170911.html [2] Introduction to RPW Experimental Study of RPW system: https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/18/11-18-0357-00-0000-experimental-study-of-a-rotating-polarizaton-wave-system.pptx https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/18/11-18-0357-00-0000-exp...
- JPLeRouzic 4y ago
  Hi, I participated in IEEE 802.11 a few years, 10 years ago, there is a lot of politics and you have to approach the main actors (at the time Broadcom and qualcomm) and discuss with them in bilateral meetings for maybe a year, to understand what they would consider or not. Normally if the are business cases, they should be interested and help you. Yet because it's mainly about politics you will find one or two strong groups opposed to your group for whatever weird reasons, but mainly because they do not know you: You are outsiders. After yet one or two years of 802.11 discussions, you will succeed because they will accept you as insiders. Just for the anecdote, the internal wars within 802.11 were quite nasty for 802.11n in 2007, and when the group met at Hawaii, suddenly all people agreed. One participant said that seing all those nude breasts was an important factor for the adoption of the 802.11n proposal!
  - 4y ago
azinman2 4y ago
Saying nobody needs it is like saying who needs more than 640k of ram. Use cases are already there in AR/VR, and additional will follow as the technology becomes available.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Yeah, modern video cable standards are approaching 100 gbps. There's plenty of potential use for way more networking bandwidth than consumers have current access to. There may not be current applications, but I think that's much more to do with lack of access than lack of utility.
sschueller 4y ago
Wifi is not a replacement for cellular networks. As more and more people have wifi access points it makes sense to focus on speed and congestion management. What I would like to see is the ability for wifi devices to relay others without having access to the data. Similar to a mesh network that every device supports and some sort of decentralized management allowing better signal for all devices.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  WiFi is extremely power-hungry and most devices with WiFi are battery-operated (phones, tablets) - an arbitrary random mesh would only lead to dead batteries in a matter of hours.
- greggsy 4y ago
  This is already in place for IOT networks like Thread, but it’s only practical at very low bandwidth and where the routing devices are connected to a power source. I, for one, would not appreciate someone burning through my battery to stream Netflix…
doikor 4y ago
Problem with low frequency is that it penetrates everything and has the longer range. In urban environments the spectrum will just become congested to the point of it being useless (this already happens with 2.4GHz in big cities)
- __alexs 4y ago
  Is this true even with beam forming? Or does beam forming not work well with lower frequencies?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    If there are too many ssids present and they're configured to allow low data rates (which they often are) even just the beacons broadcasting the existence of the networks can consume a reasonable portion of available airtime.
watersb 4y ago
I live in a four-plex apartment, but surrounded by other low-rise apartment buildings. There are at least 27 WiFi networks in the 2.4 GHz bands that all dance to share bandwidth. 5 GHz is dramatically better for us, more channels and less contention. For cellular networks, however, the only reliable service is Verizon, because they have lower-frequency bands that can provide more range out here.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Can we focus on longer range and penetration instead of higher bandwidth nobody needs at frequencies that require line of sight? What about the 900MHz band?

by akelly 4y ago

Can we focus on longer range and penetration instead of higher bandwidth nobody needs at frequencies that require line of sight? What about the 900MHz band?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fhub 4y ago

Wi-Fi HaLow 802.11ah. 902–928 MHz in North-America, 863–868 MHz in Europe, 755–787 MHz in China. Pretty low bandwidth though. Mainly focussed on IoT. I'm following https://www.morsemicro.com/ https://www.morsemicro.com/ who is implementing it from the ground up. Some amazing talent there.

simondotau 4y ago

Longer range and better penetration means even more congestion in built-up areas. 2.4GHz is as low as you’d want to go in any application other than rural mansions.

denimnerd42 4y ago
yeah the switch to 5ghz was huge when i lived in an apartment. i had an ap in each room and i barely received any congestion in that spectrum because the walls blocked it all. i imagine it’s great for schools and businesses in the same way.
NegativeLatency 4y ago
I’ve lived in several plaster and lathe buildings and other houses that would've benefited from longer range WiFi
- cameronh90 4y ago
  My house is solid brick walls throughout. My WiFi is awful in any room without an access point.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    We in wall access points (eg Unifis) are great for room coverage, and there are Ethernet ports on them too, so they provide a convenient switch too. However doing a whole house wouldn’t be cheap.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      Unifis? Are they homeplugs? (Ethernet over Powerline) Homeplugs are awesome. Used them in Singapore due to concret walls everywhere which made Wifi basically useless. Had them in every room for Wifi + Ethernet.
      - rejectfinite 4y ago
        > Unifis? Are they homeplugs? (Ethernet over Powerline) No, they are accesspoints > Homeplugs are awesome They CAN be awesome. Depends on the wireing. But if they work, they work well. I just had to replug mine every week or so but this weas a few years ago. I ethernet hardwire everything now as Im just in a small room.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    Brick walls don't block wifi that much - there's probably steel or concrete (or both) in your walls and floors. That kills wifi pretty good. In a traditional brick house you can get wifi coverage on 2.4 GHz, and for the most part 5 GHz as well, into the last nook and cranny with a single, well-placed AP.
    - cameronh90 4y ago
      There's definitely no steel in my house, however there is lime plaster which is somewhat similar to concrete. I can get 2.4GHz fine, but it's pretty slow for a 1Gb/s connection. 5GHz only within the room of the AP in general (or the room immediately above/below, because the floors are just wood).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
varenc 4y ago
Shouldn't we be able to trade off the higher speed for less conflict by having each client spend less time taking up air space? Like if we can achieve 5GBps, than presumably there could be dozens of networks operating at ~200MBps speeds all sharing the same frequencies.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  Wi-Fi 6 and newer opted for OFDMA instead of TDMA but it achieves the same goal of splitting the bandwidth dynamically based on client workload. OFDMA isn't coordinated over multiple APs though.

vlan0 4y ago

Do you have use cases in mind? Unfortunately, you’re not going to get long range without more interference. Which makes it hard to deploy with any sort of density.

akelly 4y ago
I have two APs in my house and get zero reception in the bathroom that's next to one of the APs because of the tiled lath and plaster walls. Same with the kitchen in my grandparents house.

aidenn0 4y ago

The 5GHz band is the only usable band where I live because the 2.4GHz bnd has longer range and better penetration. There are at least 5 visible networks on each of the 3 non-overlapping 2.4GHz channels from any given point in my house, and if I'm in a corner of the house (my AP is centrally located) there are more.

teleforce 4y ago

Personally my group is working on a new reliable wireless based on wireless polarization of the EM waves with collaboration with Hitachi at 900 Mhz. The initial results are very promising [1]. It's already proposed to the IEEE but perhaps at the time the timing is not right, and it's not been very well received [2]. Recently our group have improved on the wireless system and the bandwidth is much better with MPSK rather the original BPSK. From simulation the improved wireless system is a few order of magnitude better than LoRa in term of BER performance with significantly improved range especially in multi-path environment. We are now trying to improve further with additional channel coding and more efficient modulation for better efficiency in real world application with linear power amplifier (PA). Really hope this new polarization based wireless technology can get into the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 and 6G networks, to significantly improve wireless communication reliability for consumer and industry. [1] Successful prototyping of a rotating polarized wave receiver for high-quality wireless communication in manufacturing environments: https://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/month/2017/09/170911.html https://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/month/2017/09/170911.html [2] Introduction to RPW Experimental Study of RPW system: https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/18/11-18-0357-00-0000-experimental-study-of-a-rotating-polarizaton-wave-system.pptx https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/18/11-18-0357-00-0000-exp...

JPLeRouzic 4y ago
Hi, I participated in IEEE 802.11 a few years, 10 years ago, there is a lot of politics and you have to approach the main actors (at the time Broadcom and qualcomm) and discuss with them in bilateral meetings for maybe a year, to understand what they would consider or not. Normally if the are business cases, they should be interested and help you. Yet because it's mainly about politics you will find one or two strong groups opposed to your group for whatever weird reasons, but mainly because they do not know you: You are outsiders. After yet one or two years of 802.11 discussions, you will succeed because they will accept you as insiders. Just for the anecdote, the internal wars within 802.11 were quite nasty for 802.11n in 2007, and when the group met at Hawaii, suddenly all people agreed. One participant said that seing all those nude breasts was an important factor for the adoption of the 802.11n proposal!
- 4y ago

azinman2 4y ago

Saying nobody needs it is like saying who needs more than 640k of ram. Use cases are already there in AR/VR, and additional will follow as the technology becomes available.

thfuran 4y ago
Yeah, modern video cable standards are approaching 100 gbps. There's plenty of potential use for way more networking bandwidth than consumers have current access to. There may not be current applications, but I think that's much more to do with lack of access than lack of utility.

sschueller 4y ago

Wifi is not a replacement for cellular networks. As more and more people have wifi access points it makes sense to focus on speed and congestion management. What I would like to see is the ability for wifi devices to relay others without having access to the data. Similar to a mesh network that every device supports and some sort of decentralized management allowing better signal for all devices.

mschuster91 4y ago
WiFi is extremely power-hungry and most devices with WiFi are battery-operated (phones, tablets) - an arbitrary random mesh would only lead to dead batteries in a matter of hours.
greggsy 4y ago
This is already in place for IOT networks like Thread, but it’s only practical at very low bandwidth and where the routing devices are connected to a power source. I, for one, would not appreciate someone burning through my battery to stream Netflix…

doikor 4y ago

Problem with low frequency is that it penetrates everything and has the longer range. In urban environments the spectrum will just become congested to the point of it being useless (this already happens with 2.4GHz in big cities)

__alexs 4y ago
Is this true even with beam forming? Or does beam forming not work well with lower frequencies?
- thfuran 4y ago
  If there are too many ssids present and they're configured to allow low data rates (which they often are) even just the beacons broadcasting the existence of the networks can consume a reasonable portion of available airtime.

watersb 4y ago

I live in a four-plex apartment, but surrounded by other low-rise apartment buildings. There are at least 27 WiFi networks in the 2.4 GHz bands that all dance to share bandwidth. 5 GHz is dramatically better for us, more channels and less contention. For cellular networks, however, the only reliable service is Verizon, because they have lower-frequency bands that can provide more range out here.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]