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Home > Members > Members Only > Where's Wireless in Your Future?
Wi-Fi high speed wireless "hot-spots" are proliferating in airports, shopping malls, offices, entertainment events and residences. Driving this growth is market demand for an easily accessible Internet connection without the hassle of cables, coupled with the maturity of industry standards that enable compatibility among many vendors' products.
People on the move are using wireless communications power to conduct business, keep up with friends, access entertainment and completely network their homes without cables. It's affordable and practical for everyone.
What's new is the availability of more products that consumers rely on, such as PDAs and entertainment systems that comply with the Wi-Fi industry standard. PATCA consultant Joel Williams is working with companies to ensure that Wi-Fi certified products will all work together. Joel is also a consultant to the Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry organization.
Testing Products
To comply with industry standards, extensive testing is done not only on the embedded technologies but also to assure the network access points and communication cards work well with such consumer devices as PDAs, PCs and cell phones. Some interesting applications of wireless technology coming soon are:
- Eliminating wires connecting your TV and stereo components
- Wireless printers
- Combination PDA/cell phone that connects at high speed to a wireless network or to conventional cell network
- Doing your business computing on the go with your PC; e.g. at a fast food restaurant
More Innovation Leadership from Silicon Valley
Many companies providing innovation for Wi-Fi products are located in Northern California, including major providers of the core technology and the equipment needed to power Wi-Fi hotspots and the consumer products that use them.
- The Wireless Security Forum is the premier conference and technology showcase focused solely on critical and emerging technologies, standards and regulatory compliance issues that need to be addressed and understood, in order to successfully build, deploy, and manage secure corporate wireless networks and applications.
- The Wi-Fi Alliance is a nonprofit international association formed in 1999 to certify interoperability of wireless Local Area Network products based on IEEE 802.11 specification. Currently the Wi-Fi Alliance has over 200 member companies from around the world, and over 1000 products have received Wi-Fi® certification since certification began in March of 2000. The goal of the Wi-Fi Alliance's members is to enhance the user experience through product interoperability.
- Over the past couple of years, we have seen data rate standards move from 1 or 2 M bit/sec to 11 and 54M bit/sec currently. These rates will continue to grow and increase effective channel usage. Presently, the IEEE 802.11n Working Group is driving standards for rates in excess of 100M bit/sec, based on better modulation and intelligent radios.
- Blue Tooth wireless networking is usually applied successfully in low speed, low power, and short distance applications. Wireless devices in use include mice, keyboards and phone headsets.
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