This was the year of innovation in wireless technologies,
of standards wars and ratifications and of new developments. Till date, one
could nicely categorize all wireless technologies. There was 802.11a/b/g for
Wireless LANs, Bluetooth for wireless PANs, GSM/GPRS/CDMA for wireless WANs,
RFIDs for supply chain management, etc (see 'Key Terms'). All these
technologies have had high degrees of penetration in their respective markets.
But in the recent past, several other wireless technologies have been under
development, which promise to blur out these fine categories and compete head on
with existing technologies. Whether a technology lives or fades away, the good
news for all of us is that there will be lots of different wireless applications
around to improve our quality of life-at home, at work, on a vacation or
traveling. Let's look at the action that's been happening in all of these to
determine what's in store for you next year.
Predictions for 2006 |
|
Blast from the past
Many key trends this year have boosted wireless applications. One was
the steep drop in prices of wireless access points, and the onslaught of a wide
range of wireless routers from different vendors for
SOHO
. As a result, anybody could quickly set up a wireless network. Today, you can
buy a wireless router for as little as Rs 3,000, and most notebooks anyways come
with built-in WiFi capabilities, making it easy to set up a wireless network. We
also saw many innovative wireless devices hit the market, like the ASUS's
wireless NAS box and the Netgear's wireless travel router. The NAS box had a
hard drive and embedded software that allowed the box to act as a file server.
You could create users and give them access to storage space on the hard drive.
Users could then access their allotted storage space over WiFi. The travel
router was a tiny wireless router that could be put in your notebook. You could
even plug it into a DSL line and have wireless Internet access wherever you
want. 802.11g became the de-facto WiFi standard in
India
, while 802.11b phased out. In Wireless WANs, the number of GSM subscribers grew
to a whopping 53 mn in
India
, and in CDMA, it grew to 14.35 mn. Bluetooth grew in popularity this year, with
a slew of applications and products. For instance, one of the world's largest
wireless healthcare networks was implemented using Bluetooth in
Copenhagen
in October this year. The technology managed to get lot of products, whether
they were access points, headsets, office equipment, PC, audio/visual equipment,
automobiles, keyboards, mice, healthcare, mobile phones, GPS, or you name it.
Milestones '05 | |||
May | July | October | November |
WPA (WiFi Protected access) support incorporated in Win XP. Bluetooth based product shipments climb to 5 million a week. | The three competing groups working on 802.11n (next update to WLANs), agree to submit joint proposal. The groups are TGn Sync, WWiSE, and MITMOT, and the standardization process is to finish by second half of 2006. |
The first demonstration of Bluetooth with UWB given by Open Interface on Freescale Semiconductor UltraWide Band hardware. They achieved 110 Mbps as against Bluetooth's currently supported throughput of 2.1 Mbps. | GSM users in India hit 53 millionCDMA users base crosses 20 million, according to AUSPI. |
Standards wars
The 802.11i security standard for instance went into full effect this year.
Being an issue in WiFi networks, many security techniques have been worked out,
be it WEP or MAC-based filtering. The one that has finally become popular is WPA
or WiFi Protected Access. It was ratified in June 2004, and this year, products
based on this standard streamed in at full flow. This year, the next version to
this standard, WPA 2 also came into being, and Win XP started supporting it in
May. The WPA implements most of the 802.11i standard specs as proposed by IEEE.
As security has always been a concern on WiFi networks, this standard has helped
alleviate some of the issues and will go a long way in helping more
organizations implement WiFi networks over the coming year.
Coming to standards wars, one has been for higher-speed
wireless access, which would take WiFi throughput beyond the current 54 Mbps to
a theoretical maximum of 540 Mbps. This will be achieved using MIMO
(Multiple In Multiple Out) and based on IEEE 802.11n standard, and two groups
have been fighting it out with competing proposals since 2004, TGn Sync and
WWiSE. This year, they decided to merge their proposals and send it for
approval. The results for the same will be declared by mid 2006. So hopefully,
we should see WLAN speeds soar towards the second half of 2006 with mutual
agreement between both factions. This doesn't, however, mean that you should
put on hold your plans of implementing WiFi. Study your WiFi needs carefully and
if the current technologies are able to meet them, go ahead and use them. In
fact, even if you must have high-speed wireless today, some pre-802.11n standard
based products are already available (September 2005 WiFi Access Point
shootout).
Key Terms |
802.11n: The UltraWide Band: Bluetooth: The WPA: WiFi WEP: Stands for WiMAX: Worldwide Zigbee: Another |
Rising competition and choices
developed. One is WiMax-currently aimed as a high-speed wireless broadband
technology that can work within a radius of 3—10 kms. It's expected to
replace DSL and cable as the last mile solution. Even mobile users in a city can
use it within a radius of 3 kms and get up to 15 Mbps bandwidth. It's expected
to be incorporated in notebooks and PDAs next year. Besides DSL and cable, it
could also pull users of GPRS and CDMA, who don't travel much. Since the
technology is more efficient than 802.11, who knows it could also end up
replacing that. But don't worry about it, as that's not bound to happen next
year at least.
Hit or Miss |
|
Buffalo AirStation MIMO WZR-G108 This one offers a theoretical 108 Mbps, and practically it crossed 31 Mbps in our tests. That is something no other AP that we tested could reach. You'll find more products based on it next year-once the 802.11n specification gets ratified. |
|
ASUS Wireless Hard Drive |
On the Wireless PANs front, Bluetooth is getting ready for
its next version. Though the current Enhanced Data Rate Version has seen
tremendous success in terms of support for devices, its bandwidth is still
limited to only 2.1 Mbps. That's why the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest
Group) is now in talks with UltraWide Band manufacturers to use their technology
in Bluetooth. This would give a significant boost to the throughput. At the same
time, another technology called Wireless USB based on UWB is also underway,
which is supposed replace the current 'wired' USB standard, offering a
similar 480 Mbps throughput. Remember how the wired USB managed to replace most
other interfaces? Do you talk of the serial and parallel ports now? Everything
is USB. The wireless version aims to convert everything to wireless. It's
fairly ambitious, and in direct competition to Bluetooth, but we can't say
anything till some products hit the market.
Conclusion
wireless world. As we said, everything wireline-PANs, LANs, MANs or WANs-is
going wireless now. So you can imagine the number of applications that will
result from it. It's not possible to capture all the excitement in few pages,
so watch out for coming issues next year for more.