Gigabit WiFi For Video Streaming

WiFi hotspots, routers and access points have been deployed to such an extent that WiFi really is the default wireless connection. Bluetooth range is way too short. WiMax never deployed far enough, wide enough or fast enough. Cellular 3G and 4G are only valuable when you are away from WiFi access, since bandwidth is limited and overages are painful. Recent reports show that most tablets never use the built-in 3G wireless. WiFi is a replacement for cellular broadband, but it’s also becoming a replacement for wires.

Think about it. How much trouble and how expensive is it to string Ethernet cables through a home or office? Most people don’t have the skill or determination to snake wires through the walls of their two story home and don’t dare to try to wire an apartment. That means you are stuck with being in the same room as your DSL or Cable modem. Inexpensive WiFi routers got rid of that cable limitation. Now many PCs and printers come with WiFi access so that you can place them anywhere you want.

The other big tether is the television coax or HDMI cable. If you want to connect video, you have to string wires. The standard means for that has been RG-6 or RG-59 coax. But HD outputs are now HDMI, so your old coax is limited to SD video. That’s assuming you were able to get coax installed in every room you wanted.

Complicating matters now is that traditional video sources, such as satellite and DVD, are merging with the Internet. Many TVs, Blu-ray players and games now come with Ethernet jacks. You still need an Ethernet cable, but now it’s for video broadband not just web browsing. Or... do you?

Video is a need screaming for a wireless solution. The legacy WiFi 802.11b&g versions clearly are not up to the task. WiFi 802.11n does much better, but has trouble finding a clear path through the crowded 2.4 GHz ISM band. It's also pressed for enough bandwidth to support all things video. The solution? It’s an enhancement to WiFi-N called WiFi 802.11ac.

What’s better about WiFi-AC compared to WiFi-N? Most importantly, it pushes wireless bandwidth above the Gbps level. Total capacity of an 8 antenna system will reach almost 7 Gbps when this technology is fully developed. That should be enough to keep up with the rapid advancement of HD and 3D streaming video devices and become the way to eliminate Ethernet, HDMI and coaxial cabling in the home and office.

How does 802.11ac achieve this performance? First of all, it completely abandons the crowded 2.4 GHz band and uses the lesser populated 5 GHz band exclusively. That cuts out a lot of interference. Next, the transmission channels are widened to achieve more data carrying capacity. Channels are 40 MHz maximum in 802.11n. These are expanded to 80 MHz minimum and 160 MHz optional for the new standard.

WiFi-N introduced MIMO or Multiple Input Multiple Output antenna technology. MIMO is a way for transmitters and receivers to deal with scattering radio waves and interference by intelligently analyzing the received signals to determine which ones are valid. It’s a little like being able to tell which direction a sound originates by using two ears rather than one. Beamforming compensates for phase shift of multiple received signals to increase the total signal level. This allows higher bandwidth over a longer range.

A more complex modulation scheme is being introduced in 802.11ac called 256 QAM. The term QAM refers to Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. It uses both amplitude and phase shift to send data over two combined carriers differing by 90 degrees, called quadrature. Each combination of phase and amplitude represents one digital number. 802.11n used 64 QAM to send 6 bits per symbol. 256 QAM sends 8 bits per symbol, a third more efficient in use of the spectrum.

When will be see 802.11ac equipment on the market? Probably near the end of this year or the beginning of next. Broadcom recently announced the first chipset to support the protocol. They are dubbing it “5G WiFi” to emphasize the considerably higher performance from previous wireless standards, similar to how cellular carriers use 2G, 3G and 4G to describe their generations of technology.

MiFi Points The Way to Wireless Transition

Verizon Wireless just made an amazing announcement. They will be selling the Apple iPad in their stores. But aren’t Apple and AT&T exclusive partners? Indeed. So, why is Verizon selling a product that won’t work on their network? ...Or will it?

Yes, it will. How Verizon accomplished this clever feat of engineering points the way to the future of wireless broadband. Actually, not the future future. Just the immediate future. Call it the era of wireless transition.

Wireless technology has pretty much developed along two lines. One is the telecom carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. There are other players in the cellular wireless game, but they are simply private branded versions of the big four within the US. What characterizes the major carriers is that their offerings are proprietary. What works on AT&T won’t work on Verizon Wireless, and vice versa.

The other wireless path is an industry standard known a WiFi. It comes in flavors such as a, b, g, and n. But unlike telecom carrier services there is enough commonality and backwards compatibility that pretty much any WiFi device will work on pretty much any wireless router, hotspot or access point.

What Verizon has cleverly done is marry the two lines. They can’t get into the iPad through the front door, so the come in the back door. How? Very simple. They use an interface device to convert cellular to WiFi. That device is the MiFi. The Verizon MiFi is a little box about the size of a pack of cards. Inside is a cellular radio, a WiFi radio, a battery and some circuitry to make it all work. All you do is push a button to turn it on and the converter works automatically. It allows up to 5 wireless devices to gain access to the Verizon 3G wireless network as if they were Verizon-enabled to begin with.

The Verizon iPad will consist of an Apple iPad and a Verizon MiFi bundled together. They are separate pieces of equipment, but the MiFi will slip into your pocket or bag so it isn’t intrusive. At first blush, it may seem like having to carry around two pieces of equipment instead of just one is a big disadvantage for Verizon compared to AT&T. But Verizon may get the last laugh after all. The MiFi provides 3G connectivity for your iPad, but it also provides 3G connectivity for your other devices that don’t have their own 3G service built-in. That includes your laptop computer, netbook, games, and even your Apple iPod. If you had to buy separate 3G service for each device, you’d go broke. But one MiFi can serve whatever gadgets need connectivity, as long as they are WiFi enabled.

Verizon isn’t the only one with a MiFi. Novatel, maker of the MiFi, offers an unlocked version for GSM carriers AT&T and T-Mobile. There’s a MiFi specifically for Virgin Mobile. Sprint goes one further with their Sierra Wireless Overdrive 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot. It works on both the Sprint 3G Mobile Broadband network and its 4G WiMAX network. CLEAR offers a similar 3G/4G converter called Clear Spot.

Even these converters are transitional technology. Smartphones, starting with the Droid X by Motorola and Samsung Epic, have the cellular to WiFi hotspot capability built-in. This is likely to become a standard feature on smartphone designs, as WiFi and Bluetooth are the industry standard wireless technologies. WiFi has the greater transmission range.

Down the road a few years, the tide of wireless seems to be going in the direction of standardizing on LTE as a 4G standard. Cellular phone may give way to VoIP over LTE. At that point it will be hard to tell the difference between a mobile phone, a smartphone and a digital device like a tablet computer. Perhaps a single smart radio chip will provide universal wireless connectivity. Just pick your carrier and sign up for a service plan after you buy the device. The wireless transition era will be complete.

Ghost Routers In The Sky

Look! Up in the Air! It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Wi-Fi.

The age of the flying hotspot is upon us. After some tentative starts, it now looks like the entire air fleet is embracing wireless Internet service for its customers. American Airlines recently announced it is joining the fray by installing WiFi access on more than 300 planes. Delta, Northwest and Virgin already have similar services in the works.

You knew it had to be this way eventually. We're an addictive nation. We may be shunning old vices like tobacco, trans fats, gas guzzling SUVs and even plastic bags. But electronic fixes are the new high. No teenager would be caught cell-less. No adult is going to be forced to take more than short trips without logging on to the Internet. The hotel industry caught on to this insatiable demand a decade ago. Restaurants caught on this decade.

Now it's time for the airlines. We may not need in-flight meals or drinks or movies or pillows. We don't care if we're crammed in like lobsters headed to that final sauna. You can make us sit in those cramped little seats for three hours before we take off. But there better be Internet service, or else.

The airlines are no fools. They're not going to be giving away WiFi access, after all. Have that $10 bill ready for the short hops. More for longer flights. American is going to offer a lower cost service for smartphones and PDAs, so the text addicted can keep on tweetin'. But don't get the idea you can flap your yap on a cell phone. You can only let your fingers do the talking. Quiet clicking will be acceptable to your fellow travelers, unlike some buffoon talking much too loudly and sharing way too much personal information.

There are two competing systems for in-flight Internet service. One uses cellular towers along the flight path. The other uses satellites. Aircell's Gogo system is cellular based, but you don't pick up the signal directly from the cell towers. Instead, the airplane receives the transmissions and feeds an onboard WiFi hotspot supporting 802.11 a/b/g wireless communications. That makes it compatible with everything but non-WiFi enabled cell phones.

Boeing's Connexion pioneered the use of satellite to plane links to provide service over water where there are long stretches of the briny deep with no land and no cellular towers. Service was discontinued in 2006 due to lack of sufficient demand.

A mere three years later, the demand has materialized. Perhaps it's due to our ever more connected world where both our business and personal lives require near-constant connection with the Internet. Perhaps air travel has finally become miserable enough that only our only escape is down the online rabbit hole into an alternate reality. But so many airlines are busily testing and deploying wireless routers on their planes that it looks like WiFi in the air is here to stay.

The big question is how long airlines will be able to collect those access fees for the same broadband service that hotels and restaurants are giving away free. We'll know the answer when people start picking their flights based on who is going to give them free WiFi.

Internet to Soothe the Savage Flyer

What's more fun that snagging the last seat on the 5 o'clock flight across the country? Why, it's you being the filling in a sandwich cookie of three disgruntled fliers, cheek to jowl, with nothing to do for five or six hours but progressively increase your blood pressure. Suddenly it occurs to you that "coach" is only one letter removed from "roach," perhaps an apt description of your seatmates. If only you could get online to distract yourself by answering email or finding a game to play. But that's impossible. There's no Internet superhighway in the sky. Or is there?

Relief may be at hand, intrepid road warrior. According to a recent story in the Washington Post, major airlines are readying a rollout of onboard WiFi Internet access, starting later this year. A flying free WiFi hotspot? Wow!

Ixnay on the eefray. You don't really expect a courtesy service in an industry where courtesy fell out of the sky years ago, do you? Oh, no. What the air carriers are cooking up is pay as you go Internet access. You pay and the plane may even go... eventually. But you won't care as much as you do now. You'll be browsing the latest headlines and stock prices. Or perhaps blogging on the joy of flying.

Whatever you do online, the airlines know two things. After taking away free soft drinks, blankets, pillows, meals, little bags of peanuts and luggage checking, they better come up with some way to relieve the mounting stress of the flying public before everybody pops a valve. By being clever, they can do this and make a bundle selling the same Internet service you expect for free in a sandwich shop.

Paid Internet service is a double win for airlines that can get their planes outfitted as quickly as possible. Hungry, bored, agitated, stressed out, burned out travelers will gladly pay through the nose for an onboard Internet fix. The soothing effect begins as fast as your laptop can connect. As a way of numbing potentially hostile fliers, the Internet is far superior to alcoholic beverages. Alcohol depresses your inhibitions, which may all that is keeping you from letting them know what you really think of their operation. But logged-in and tuned-out, you'll be a model customer. Internet for a fee would appear to be the perfect add-on service.

The magic that will make this all work is a ground based network of radio towers and in-plane hotspots provided by Aircell. Aircell won an FCC spectrum auction in 2006 to acquire an exclusive license for air-to-ground broadband communications. The uplink and downlink from tower to aircraft is very similar to cellular technology. The system transmits and receives in the upper portion of the 800 MHz band using the EV-DO protocol, similar to Verizon and Sprint cellular broadband service.

On the aircraft, avionics hardware converts the uplink/downlink data stream to a 802.11a/b/g WiFi hotspot that blankets the passenger cabin. This wireless broadband should be accessible by nearly all laptop computers and many cellphones. If your gadget can connect to a WiFi hotspot and you have a $10 bill in your pocket, you can join the mile-high browser club. That's the expected price of service on Delta for flights of 3 hours or less: $9.95. For longer flights the price will be a few dollars more.

In addition to Delta, who else is revving up for airborne broadband? American Airlines and Virgin America are also getting their fleets Internet-ready as fast as they can. Jet Blue already has limited online services. At some point, fairly soon, we'll probably reach a tipping point where wireless Internet access will be as ubiquitous as it has become in hotels. Business travelers will start shunning airplanes that aren't connected as if they still had two wings and no meal service. Well, two wings anyway.

I Know Where You Took Your Pictures Last Summer

Eye-Fi, the WiFi Memory Card, has a new trick up its electronic sleeve. Now it knows where you've been taking pictures and it's telling!

The latest version of the innovative camera memory that uploads electronic photos to your computer or photo Website is called the Eye-Fi Explore. What the Explore version adds to the basic Eye-Fi card is location tagging. Geotags or geographic location labels are automatically added to your pictures as you take them. Eerie, eh?

You might wonder how they managed to cram a GPS receiver as well as a WiFi transceiver and 2 Gigabyte memory into that little SD card. Well, don't strain your brain. They didn't actually do that. Instead, they're using a poor-man's GPS that calculates positions based on known WiFi hotspot locations nationwide. It's impressive. Over 70% of the U.S. population locations are mapped. In Europe it's limited to the top 50 metro areas, with up to 70% in the U.K, Germany, and France.

Speaking of WiFi hotspots, the purchase price of the Eye-Fi Explorer comes with access to 10,000 Wayport Wi-Fi hotspots across the US for a year. After that you're on your own to renew. And you need these hotspots, why? Remember the basic premise of the Eye-Fi is that you don't have to make your way home and wrestle with USB cables to get the pictures out of your camera. They literally fly out of the Eye-Fi card and through the ether to the Internet or your home network.

The deal that Eye-Fi has with WiFi provider Wayport is that the Explore card comes already set up to use the hotspots. No setting up an account, logging-in or toting around a laptop computer required. You walk into a Wayport location, such as an airport, hotel or restaurant, and while you're going about your business the pictures you just took get uploaded. If you forget to put a quarter in the parking meter out front and go dashing out the door, Eye-Fi will simply remember where it was and finish the upload at the next Wayport.

It's like having a little valet inside your camera, taking care of the tedious chore of getting your prized snapshots to someplace they'll be useful. As a devout USB cable wrestler, I can see where you could get addicted to a service like that. Oh, and no need to scratch your head trying to remember where you saw that awesome sculpture or met that special someone. The geolocating feature tags each photo with the spot, or reasonably close.

Think that this technology might make your life easier? Then have a look at the Eye-Fi Explore Wireless 2 GB Secure Digital Card (EYE-FI-2EX)