Wi-Fi continues to evolve in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, but as those bands get more crowded, the industry will increasingly look to IEEE 802.11ad, also known as WiGig, in the unlicensed 60 GHz band. 802.11ad provides multiple Gigabit per second data rates and solves congestion issues.

The goal of 802.11ad is to address the congestion and capacity issues, resulting in an improved user experience.

True tri-band Wi-Fi solutions use three bands: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 60 GHz. There are some Wi-Fi product vendors that labeled their products as tri-band. However, in reality, these are really dual-band products that can use two channels in 5 GHz simultaneously, in addition to 2.4 GHz for additional speed and capacity.

The goals of 802.11ad are to provide higher data throughput and lower latency solutions away from more crowded spectrum bands by operating in the 60 GHz millimeter wave band. The 60 GHz band is unlicensed, just like the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. This spectrum band accommodates ultra-wideband channels that enable multiple Gigabit-per-second data rates. 802.11ad is a Wi-Fi protocol with a very different technology than that used by other protocols, but will leverage the brand, ubiquity, and momentum of Wi-Fi with tri-band solutions. Generally, the number of bands covers:

• Single-band: 2.4 GHz
• Dual-band: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
• Tri-band: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 60 GHz

The 802.11ad standard was completed in 2012; chipsets are commercially available from a few companies, including Intel and Qualcomm, and Wi-Fi Alliance certification will start in late 2016. The Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification will say “Wiig Certified by Wi-Fi Alliance.” New networking, docking, PC, and mobile products with Wiig were announced and displayed at CES 2016 in January.

The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands are becoming increasingly crowded by existing protocols and other technologies, and this negatively affects the user experience. By using the 60 GHz band, Wi-Fi has an option to avoid interference from other Wi-Fi bands, while also not adding to that interference. Since beamforming is required to form the more concentrated transmissions that make the 60 GHz band usable, 802.11ad has the added benefit of spatial separation. The same channel could be used by separate transmission from separate pairs of products at the same time as long as they are not too close together. 802.11ad has a speed and capacity advantage gained from the use of a different spectrum band, ultra-wideband channels, and the resulting spatially separated transmissions that result from beamforming required to make millimeter wave spectrum usable.

It is easy to ask why the industry even needs 802.11ad, since existing Wi-Fi protocols can do a decent job transmitting video. The performance of 802.11ac is now improving with the addition of MU-MIMO and 802.11ax will have further improvements. If one looks merely at the latest Wi-Fi protocols, data rates, and capabilities, it is easy to think 802.11ad is not needed. However, 802.11ad is very complimentary to 802.11ac:

• There is much more spectrum available in 60 GHz than in 5 GHz;
• 5 GHz Wi-Fi will eventually suffer from a capacity problem in some scenarios—in homes with many data-intensive Wi-Fi enabled products being used, in dense enterprise settings, and on mobile networks in dense urban areas. By using 60 GHz spectrum, 802.11ad will avoid interference and network congestion in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum bands;
• 802.11ad transmissions will not interfere with each other as much as competing Wi-Fi networks do because of the inherent spatial division that occurs through the use of beamforming;
• 802.11ad has a better power-per-bit performance relative to 802.11ac, and a similar impact on battery life as 802.11ac.

802.11n in 2.4 GHz, 802.11ac in 5 GHz, and 802.11ad in 60 GHz span the gamut from backwards compatibility to forward compatibility and from range to performance.

The Wi-Fi Alliance created Miracast to standardize the application layer to carry video over 802.11n and 802.11ac. Miracast works over Wi-Fi Direct, which forms a peer-to-peer connection between two Wi-Fi products. This does not mean that this usage of Wi-Fi cannot benefit from 802.11ad. Indeed, 802.11ad is likely to become the de facto technology used to stream video for a few reasons:

• Miracast will soon work over 802.11ad, in addition  to   802.11n and 802.11ac.
• Video requires steady reliable data rates, but can be disrupted by interference and network congestion issues. Existing Wi-Fi spectrum bands are getting congested in homes where many devices and other products are using the Wi-Fi network, including to stream video. Using Miracast over 802.11ad would avoid this congestion.
• Shifting as much video traffic as possible to 802.11ad will offload a considerable amount of traffic from 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz based Wi-Fi networks, which will result in an improved user experience over all three spectrum bands.

802.11ad is just the first Wi-Fi standard to come for the 60 GHz band. 802.11ay is a follow-on standard for Wi-Fi in 60 GHz, which will achieve well into the tens of Gigabits per second by adding OFDM and using multiple 60 GHz channels at once. This opens up many new use cases for the technology, including even higher capacity access points and backhaul solutions, and more applications of cross-device resource sharing. 802.11ay could fundamentally change the way products are designed by allowing computing resources—hardware and software—from one product to be leveraged by another.

802.11ad in no way is meant to replace 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi; it is meant to augment it. Transmitting video over 802.11ad whenever possible would reduce the load on existing Wi-Fi networks.