Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the Wi-Fi World Congress in Sarasota, Florida. Prior to the conference itself, I enjoyed the many fun activities Sarasota has to offer like the Ringling Museum and the Marie Selby Botanical Garden. It's a fabulous city and I would love to revisit.
What is the Wi-Fi World Congress?
Before discussing some of the my favorite highlights from that week, I should mention what the conference typically covers. Unlike Cisco Live or Wireless LAN Professionals Conference, this event is less geared towards those actively deploying Wi-Fi technologies as administrators or end customers. This event focuses more on new startup technologies, business opportunities and regulatory changes within the Wi-Fi space. I met attendees from less spoken about Wi-Fi vendors such as chipset and testbed companies.
For example, a few talks focussed on opportunities for Wi-Fi in MDUs (Multi Dwelling Units). Booth areas showcased new technologies such as Airvine's 60 MHz point-to-point backhaul solution. Without further ado, let's dive into my favorite conference highlights.
Favorite New Technologies
LATYS, a startup out of Montreal, QC, showcased their flagship product, the Focus MIMO relay device. The device focuses RF energy in the Wi-Fi bands at layer 1 only, avoiding some complications associated with traditional repeater deployments. I got to see the device in action, raising the RSSI perceived between end points while sitting directly in the middle. You can read more in Claus Hetting's article here
OpenWiFi also had a showcase with vendors using their technology to build products. This project provides open source software to manufacture APs with. Other companies, then build their own hardware and cloud platforms. As a result, there has been growth in enterprise areas where the cost of traditional in-house software APs remains prohibitive for many companies. Read more about the OpenWiFi project here.
Achievements in Wi-Fi Excellence
Matt Swartz and Bill Anderson discussed the challenges they had perfecting the Wi-Fi experience during each year's superbowl. Some of the included the optimal antenna design and retrofitting older stadiums not designed for a connected world. The work they have done has served as inspiration for modern LPV (Live Performance Venue) designs that push Wi-Fi's density limitations while satisfying customers' strict aesthetic requirements.
If you want to read more about specific Superbowl projects, he has a Cisco Blog available here as well as the Unplugged Connectivity YouTube channel from Cisco's Wireless Center of Excellence.
IEEE 802.11 Working Group Updates
Personally, I thought the most exciting news was from IEEE's Dorothy Stanley. She walked through some newer working group developments that many of the new products showcased rely on such as 802.11bf WLAN Sensing.
As we all may have heard, 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) slowly has come to market, promising even higher speeds. However, the most fascinating advancements are in these lesser known amendments such as finally having 802.11bh standard support for MAC randomization while maintaining client identity or using the RF properties of Wi-Fi to detect objects in 802.11bf.
Time allowing, I certainly want to perform a deep dive on some of these topics. Please let me know if that is of any interest! That's all I have for this week. Hope you all find these new technologies as interesting as I did.
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