Improving
whole home coverage and power efficiency.
IEEE 802.11ah is a new PHY and MAC
design that operates in the sub-one-gigahertz (900MHz) band. 11ah is intended
to support extended range Wi-Fi, and the Internet-of-everything
(IoE). The 11ah PHY and MAC are optimized from the ground up for
extended range, power efficiency, and scalable operation. The new 11ah design
enhances link-budget compared to 2.4GHz technologies. 11ah supports mandatory
and globally interoperable 1 and 2 MHz bandwidth modes which open up new use
cases for Wi-Fi: IoE, home automation, smart grid, wearable consumer
electronics, low-power sensors, etc. 11ah also supports 4, 8, and 16 MHz
bandwidths for higher-data rate applications (e.g. in the US where 26MHz is
available in 900 MHz band). 11ah extends the range of Wi-Fi beyond the limited
range of 2.4 and 5 GHz by leveraging the improved propagation and penetration
of 900MHz radio waves through walls and obstructions. With 11ah, Wi-Fi coverage
improves in previously hard to reach places such as garages, back yards,
attics, buildings, factories, malls, etc.
A
single 11ah AP can provide whole home coverage. It can also support low cost
battery powered sensors operating without a power amplifier and which use
interoperable 1&2 MHz bandwidth modes. A 150 Kbps minimum data rate results
in short on-time for sensors with short bursty data packets thus lowering their
power consumption. Overall power is also reduced by using lower power MAC
protocols such as smaller frame formats, sensor traffic priority, and
beaconless paging mode. 11ah MAC is also optimized to scale to thousands of
nodes by using efficient paging and scheduled transmissions. 11ah leverages the
Wi-Fi ecosystem & IP network for easy setup & pairing to AP/mobiles.
11ah devices are interoperable across vendors.
11ah
is being standardized in IEEE with a draft 2.0 version expected in mid-2014.
Our Wi-Fi Advanced, along with other participants, have been leading these
standardization efforts.
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