Tag Archives: Wi-Fi

Industry News, News

WBA Report Sets Out How Wi-Fi 6/6E Enables Industry 4.0

Autonomous Mobile Robots, Automatic Guided Vehicles, Augmented & Virtual Reality Use Cases Detailed with Industrial Internet of Things Deployment Guidelines

London, UK, June 29th 2022: The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) today published “Wi-Fi 6/6E for Industrial IoT: Enabling Wi-Fi Determinism in an IoT World”. This paper explores how Wi-Fi’s latest features are ideal for meeting the unique, demanding requirements for a wide variety of existing and emerging IIoT applications. This includes manufacturing/Industry 4.0 and logistics, involving autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), automated ground vehicles (AGVs), predictive maintenance and augmented/virtual/mixed reality (AR/VR/MR).

For example, manufacturers are increasingly using IIoT sensors for vibration, temperature and lubricant viscosity to catch emerging equipment problems before they result in extensive, expensive downtime. Other IIoT sensors provide real-time insights about production output, inventory levels and asset locations. Wireless has become the preferred way to network these sensors because it’s faster and cheaper to deploy than copper or fiber.

“As more equipment is monitored, wiring becomes prohibitive,” the paper says. “Industry is moving towards the inclusion of wireless technologies to lessen the cost of obtaining more information about their processes. In one recent case in the oil and gas industry, moving to a wireless installation resulted in a 75% cost reduction in installation.”

Produced by the WBA’s Wi-Fi 6/6E for IIOT work group, led by Cisco, Deutsche Telekom and Intel the white paper provides an overview of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E capabilities that are ideal for sensors and other IIoT applications, such as:

  • Scheduled access (SA) enabled by trigger-based (TB) uplink (UL) orthogonal frequency domain multiple access (OFDMA) in Wi-Fi 6 provides the ability to reduce or eliminate contention and bound latency (e.g. 99 percentile). This leads to increased levels of determinism applicable to all real-time and IIOT applications.

 

  • Wi-Fi 6 provides many deterministic QoS capabilities, such as the traffic prioritization that is a key component of Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) for Industry 4.0 applications. Another example is Multi-link operation (MLO), a capability that helps provide high reliability for applications that cannot tolerate any packet loss.

 

  • The Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) protocol specified in IEEE 802.11-2016 enables both time-synchronization but also precise indoor range and position/location determination. This can be used for Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) and Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGV) applications such as route planning, exception handling and safety-related aspects including collision avoidance based on proximity. This capability does not require additional Wi-Fi infrastructure, so manufacturers can implement it immediately, for instance as part of their Industry 4.0 migration.

 

  • The target-wake-time (TWT) feature added to Wi-Fi 6 provides more efficient power-save and scheduling enhancement. This capability is a good fit for battery-powered IIoT nodes that need to transmit only infrequently, such as a sensor that uploads data only when a motor’s temperature exceeds a certain threshold.

 

  • Wi-Fi 6E supports up to 1.2 GHz of spectrum, making it ideal for use cases that require both multi-Gb/s throughput and determinism, such as industrial AR/VR/MR and sensor fusion.

The 52-page report also includes RF/network deployment guidelines for factory, warehouse, logistics and other use cases. For example, it provides recommendations for leveraging 802.11ax/Wi-Fi 6 scheduling capabilities to optimize traffic patterns and manage critical QoS requirements. Another example is using high-gain directional antennas to increase channel re-use rates and work around metal racks and other signal-attenuating features commonly found in warehouses.

Current Projects

Over three dozen vendors, service providers and other organizations participated in developing the white paper, which describes many of their current projects. Examples include:

  • Cisco, Intel and partners are working on use cases involving AMR and AGV, where key requirements include <10-20ms latency, <50km/h speed and .99.9999% reliability.
  • Cisco and Mettis Aerospace are working on sensor applications, where requirements include very high reliability, low power consumption and high device density.
  • Further work taking place on video-AMR fusion use cases such as collision avoidance, where technical requirements include <20ms latency and <1ms jitter.
  • Cisco is working on safety control applications, which require <1-ms latency for applications such as automatically stopping a machine after a sensor detects that the person has left the operating position.
  • Cisco, Mettis Aerospace and Intel are working on AR/VR applications with resolutions up to 80K and 90fps, where throughput requirements can be as high as 100 Mb/s.
  • Cisco is working on automotive uses cases such as logistics in high-density storage lots, where <60dBm interference is key for reliable operation.

Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, said: “Wi-Fi has been a key enabler of the global IIOT market, which is on track to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 23% between 2017 and 2023. Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are expanding capabilities by providing the multi-Gb/s data rates, additional spectrum, deterministic performance and other advanced capabilities necessary to support demanding applications such as Industry 4.0.”

Matt MacPherson, CTO, Cisco Wireless, said: “The next industrial evolution will not only depend on the ability to connect more things, but to also add greater reliability, intelligence and security. This can only be done when the world’s leading companies work together with progressive Industry 4.0 customers to explore and implement new, game-changing technologies. Cisco is proud of the work it has done with the WBA to ensure customers understand how, when and where to apply the latest innovations. It is because of advancements in wireless technology that Industrial IoT sits at the center of the forthcoming industrial revolution.”

Ahmed Hafez, VP of Network Convergence at Deutsche Telekom, said: “Deutsche Telekom’s industrial partners are demanding ubiquitous high performance wireless connectivity to take their production processes to the next level. Converged Access combining 5G cellular and Wi-Fi6/6E Networks will play a vital role to deliver comprehensively on their application and process demands in the near future”.

News, Telecoms

WBA OpenRoaming Enables Dublin’s Smart City Vision with Seamless, Secure, High-Performance Wi-Fi

Proof-of-Concept Trial Showcases How WBA OpenRoaming Provides Residents, Tourists and Businesses with Convenient Access to Municipal Services and More

London, UK, June 20th June 2022: The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) and City of Dublin today announced a successful proof-of-concept trial of OpenRoaming™ in Dublin, Ireland. Initially deployed at Bernardo Square, Dame Street and the City Council’s Amphitheatre, WBA OpenRoaming enables residents and visitors to log in only once and then maintain seamless connectivity as their smartphones, tablets and other Wi-Fi devices automatically switch between different public Wi-Fi hotspots. The success of the trial will pave the way for a larger city-wide deployment.

Dublin is a high growth city. It currently has a population in the Greater Dublin Area of around 2.02 million and is anticipated to grow to 2.2 million by 2031. It houses 30% of the country’s working population and attracts over 6.6 million overseas visitors a year. It is anticipated that OpenRoaming will be initially rolled out on over 150 AP’s across Dublin city.

Now available at over 1 million hotspots worldwide, WBA OpenRoaming frees users from the need to constantly re-register or re-enter log-in credentials — all while maintaining enterprise-grade security and privacy. The WBA OpenRoaming standard also enables enterprises, device OEMs, service providers and others to provide performance guarantees and — with Wi-Fi 6 and 6E— a carrier-grade experience as users roam between different public Wi-Fi venues.

The trial, initiated by Dublin City Council’s Smart Dublin programme and supported by the WBA and Virgin Media, also involved participation from CommScope and represents a key a milestone toward achieving Dublin’s smart city goals, which include:

  • Providing communities, residents and businesses with seamless access to services online, as well as high-quality connectivity
  • Giving tourists and other visitors free, secure, high-performance Wi-Fi access. Once they arrive and log on to an OpenRoaming-enabled hotspot, their device is automatically authenticated for use every time it switches to another OpenRoaming-enabled hotspot. This convenience makes it easier for them to find what they need, such as restaurant recommendations, transit schedules, directions and more.
  • This seamless, secure experience ensures that they have the broadband connectivity they need for interactive immersive learning, research, hybrid study and more.

Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, said: “Wi-Fi is the foundation for smart cities. This successful proof-of-concept trial shows that that the City of Dublin and its residents, businesses and visitors all can depend on the WBA OpenRoaming standard to ensure that they always have convenient access to seamless, secure, carrier-grade Wi-Fi connectivity.”

Jamie Cudden, Smart City Lead, for the City of Dublin, said: “Dublin is at the forefront of a digital transformation that is serving as a model for other municipalities across Ireland and the world. Collaborations like this are key to the delivery of convenient, reliable and ubiquitous connectivity which is critical for achieving our smart city goals such as closing the digital divide and ensuring that government is responsive to the needs of citizens and businesses. This successful trial of WBA OpenRoaming is a milestone toward achieving all those goals.”

Bart Giordano, SVP Ruckus Networks, CommScope, said: “”As a founding partner in the OpenRoaming framework, we are pleased to announce with the WBA the successful launch of the OpenRoaming initiative and network for the City of Dublin. OpenRoaming brings the promise of seamless and secure connectivity to users and IoT devices all over the world. The core elements of OpenRoaming are in line with those of the Ruckus Network portfolio: cloud federation, cybersecurity, policy and automation. We look forward to expanding the City of Dublin’s network and capabilities and supporting OpenRoaming deployments worldwide. ”

Aidan Darcy, VP Business & Wholesale at Virgin Media Ireland said: “It’s fantastic to be working with Dublin City Council on such an important initiative. Given the fact that we are the official provider of both the Wi-Fi and broadband infrastructure, we are able to offer cutting-edge broadband speeds and an exceptional Wi-Fi experience for residents and tourists availing of the new Dublin City Wi-Fi Zones. We’re passionate about connecting communities and, with this new initiative, we really feel we’ll be creating connections for good.”

Launched in May 2020, WBA OpenRoaming is now in Release 3, which will make the business and commercial aspects of roaming easier than ever before and importantly, cut back on hundreds of hours of legal and administrative time when establishing roaming settlement agreements.

World Wi-Fi Day – 20th June 2022

This announcement comes just before World Wi-Fi Day (an annual WBA initiative), a global platform to recognize and celebrate the significant role Wi-Fi is playing in getting cities and communities around the world connected.

It is a unique opportunity to reflect on how we can reduce digital poverty through innovative projects that will connect the unconnected.

News, Telecoms

WBA Issues Residential Wi-Fi Sensing Deployment Guidelines for Smart Homes & Next Gen In-home Applications

Guidelines enable Wi-Fi service providers to expand into home-based applications using motion detection, gesture recognition and biometric measurement for healthcare, security, smart homes and more

London, UK, May 12th, 2022: Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) today announced the publication of “Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines”, the latest in a series of deployment guidelines designed to help the industry, WBA members and a wide range of enterprises in different vertical industries understand the technology, its use cases, market opportunities and more.

Wi-Fi Sensing is a new and rapidly developing technology that aims to revolutionize how people use Wi-Fi networks around the world. Wi-Fi Sensing leverages existing Wi-Fi signals to sense motion, enabling a suite of new applications and revenue streams in markets such as home security, caregiving, enterprise, small business, and hospitality. Sensing enables Wi-Fi networks to become more interactive, apply new levels of automation, and unearth meaningful new user benefits from broadband services, like convenience, peace of mind, health insights, and privacy. Wi-Fi is a previously untapped source of artificial intelligence for preventative and analytics-driven solutions that could redefine our concept of the “smart” home.

“Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines” focuses on residential applications in single-family homes and multi-dwelling units. The paper covers key topics such as:

  • Technological benefits, relevant communication guidelines and constraints
  • Environmental and device factors that can impact Sensing, such as how different types of construction materials affect signal strength and propagation in each Wi-Fi band
  • Experiments that provide insights into factors such as access point locations, interference, floor plans and more
  • General deployment guidelines including access point placement, network topology, floorplan considerations and sensitivity settings

Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, said: “Wi-Fi Sensing lays the foundation for Wi-Fi service providers to expand into a wide variety of exciting new markets, including health care, home security, building automation and more. ‘Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines’ is the latest example of the WBA’s commitment to providing the marketplace with guidance for developing and deploying innovative Sensing solutions.”

Dr. Taj Manku, Co-founder and CEO at Cognitive Systems, said: “The discussions and the testing facilitated through the WBA Wi-Fi Sensing group not only bring awareness to Wi-Fi Sensing but also improve the technology itself. The next major enhancement to Wi-Fi is Sensing. We hope our work serves as an initial starting point for more stakeholders to get involved in shaping this future as the community continues working toward enhancing Sensing applications and capabilities.”

You can see how the technology is evolving through the lens of the WBA here: “Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines”.

Dr. Rajkumar Upadhyay, Executive Director C-DOT said: “Wi-Fi technology allows frugal innovations by solving various urban and rural connectivity challenges at low cost. The Wi-Fi sensing technology enables new and evolving use cases which will find immediate application in developed countries. It is interesting to map these technologies to Indian households when the government is pushing to connect every Indian home, urban and rural, with high speed broadband connectivity.”

Sandeep Agrawal, Wi-Fi Sensing Project Co-lead said: “The Wi-Fi Sensing Project group has worked over last three years to bring comprehensive whitepapers around Wi-Fi Sensing Technology including its testing, measurement and deployment aspect of this technology. The papers will supplement the broader community of standardization activities, technology and product development.”

For additional information about Wi-Fi Sensing, download these white papers:

  • “Wi-Fi Sensing — A New Technology Emerges” provides an overview of Wi-Fi Sensing technology, classifies its use cases and requirements, and identifies the gaps in Wi-Fi standards that would lead to the enhancement of the technology and ease of deployment if those gaps are addressed. It also includes a home monitoring case study as an example application and explores topics related to testing.
  • “Wi-Fi Sensing – Test Methodology and Performance Metrics” provides a detailed set of KPI metrics that can be used to evaluate the performance of a Wi-Fi Sensing-based home monitoring system. The paper includes a number of test cases and scenarios to measure the defined KPIs.
Broadband, News

WBA OpenRoaming™ Primed for Deployment Across European Municipalities Following Successful Phase Two Trial

Fast, secure, and frictionless public Wi-Fi ready to make life easier for citizens and businesses across Europe following rigorous testing throughout several municipalities in Belgium

London, April 7th, 2022 – The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) today announced the successful completion of rigorous testing around the deployment of WBA OpenRoaming, priming the innovative Wi-Fi roaming standard for adoption throughout Europe. This brings the possibility of a fast, secure, and seamless public Wi-Fi experience one step closer for citizens, visitors and businesses in the region. It enables privacy and compliance with GDPR with Wi-Fi roaming between municipalities and other networks.

The testing, which was carried out by WBA members together with several municipalities in Belgium, included assessing the viability and compatibility of iOS and Android smartphones, laptops and tablets.

As part of the trial, equipment was used from a variety of Wi-Fi AP manufacturers including WBA members Cisco and Ruckus Networks. Credentials from Identity Providers (IDPs) including eduroam and Google – also WBA members – were also tested, and different connection methods were employed to guarantee municipalities would have the flexibility to seamlessly interconnect using the OpenRoaming standard. This resulted in enabling end users, including residents, visitors, and businesses with credentials from different providers, like eduroam and Google, to be able to roam seamlessly across all the different municipalities Wi-Fi networks participating on this trial who are also part of the WIFI4EU Program.

The WIFI4EU Program is a funding initiative to accelerate digitalization across the continent with over 29,000 municipalities registered, and over 6,000 already fully implemented. It aims to deploy Wi-Fi in public spaces including parks, squares, public buildings, libraries, health centers, museums and more.

WBA OpenRoaming, an innovative Wi-Fi roaming standard managed by the WBA, frees users from constantly re-registering or re-entering log-in credentials, enabling the convenience of instant network access combined with enterprise/carrier-level security. With its adoption, municipalities can offer citizens and businesses a virtual city-wide carrier-grade internet experience by bridging the gap between cellular and Wi-Fi technology and ensuring their interoperability. A key differentiator for OpenRoaming is the ability to ensure the privacy of the individual – an increasingly hot topic on public Wi-Fi networks and complies with European GDPR policies – and that it is not impacted by MAC address rotation within user devices.

The results from the trials in Belgium conclude that OpenRoaming is primed to provide Wi-Fi roaming with security and privacy between municipalities and any type of venue that provides public Wi-Fi. The platform has also been confirmed to offer a truly seamless, secure, and private browsing experience for all European citizens and visitors.

The trial demonstrated the readiness of the industry to accommodate and welcome OpenRoaming, with several of the municipalities in Belgium having already deployed OpenRoaming. The WBA OpenRoaming standard ensures the privacy of citizens and visitors is fully protected through a robust federation-wide legal framework with signaling between federation members being protected by certificate-based encryption.

Deployments in these municipalities will facilitate seamless and secure Wi-Fi access in schools, libraries, and other public domains, enabling secure access to the internet for research, schooling, and business activities. Hotels, conference centers, restaurants, bars, and retailers also stand to benefit from OpenRoaming technology, presenting brands with opportunities to increase consumer engagement as seamless city-wide connectivity becomes a reality.

Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of WBA, shared: “This pilot with a group of municipalities in Belgium utilized the most common consumer devices, smartphones, laptops, tablets, and using Wi-Fi networks from different manufacturers validates the benefit of using a standard like WBA OpenRoaming to make life easier for consumers, visitors and residents, it also creates valuable new business opportunities for any operator, venue or retailer looking to develop its Wi-Fi services.

From libraries to coffee shops, concert halls to sports facilities, WBA OpenRoaming creates a world where Wi-Fi users can move from one network to another without the hassle of being disconnected and having to sign in again. The phase two trial represents the latest step in the WBA’s mission to close the digital gap and create a more connected world.”

Cedric Halin, Mayor of the Municipality of Olne said: “As the Mayor of Olne, known for the beauty of the countryside and of the village, I am delighted with the very positive feedback from the citizens and visitors but also from schools and associations who benefit from the Wi-Fi network deployed inside and outside public buildings. Further, with the recent implementation of OpenRoaming, the access to the network becomes even easier as the user is automatically connected to the hotspot when he reaches another location covered by the OpenRoaming network. As a small city, we are really honored to be among the first in Europe to deliver such an innovative service to the community.”

Stefan Winter for eduroam said: “We are excited about the good results of the recent successful Belgium trial with using eduroam identities on OpenRoaming hotspots: the trial showed that technical interoperability between eduroam and OpenRoaming is assured, enabling significantly more Wi-Fi coverage to eduroamers. Our vision is that both eduroam Identity Providers and eduroam end users will be able to easily opt-in to using OpenRoaming hotspots with their existing eduroam identities; while the eduroam backend infrastructure reduces the technical complexities behind opt-in.”

Matt MacPherson, Wireless CTO at Cisco commented: “Closing the digital divide with municipal, public Wi-Fi is more important now than ever before, and OpenRoaming can play an important role in ensuring easy, secure access to crucial digital resources. OpenRoaming is a perfect complement to a municipal Wi-Fi network, as it breaks down barriers to access and ensures the public are getting the greatest value out of the network. Public Wi-Fi enabled with OpenRoaming opens up new and exciting opportunities for any municipality.”

Bart Giordano, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Ruckus Networks said: “Ruckus Networks supports OpenRoaming with its SmartZone™ control and management platform. We believe that this initiative will deliver seamless connectivity experiences for users of Wi-Fi enabled devices worldwide. Successful completion of this trial brings us closer to that goal.”