Huawei recently demonstrated up to 10 GBps data rate over a Wi-Fi link on its campus in Shenzen, in China. It expects that this technology could be available in the market by 2018. Huawei is now chairing the IEEE 802.11ax task group working on developing the associated new standard.

This demonstration of leading edge Wi-Fi capability, complements recent Huawei investments (£374m) in developing 5G (cellular) technology - which also has potential to reach 10 Gbps, with commercial deployment possible by 2020 [depending on spectrum availability]. A key difference with the Wi-Fi connectivity is that likely smaller cell size means that few users will share the capacity and it will be easier to deliver a higher quality connection.

Together with investments in R&D on extending DSL technology (Gfast), it looks as though Huawei will be well positioned to offer a full suite of higher performance connecivity products to operators and consumers.

[Source: TechWeekEurope]

The World WiFi and Small Cell Summit , 28th-29th October 2014 in Barcelona, attracted industry representatives from across the globe, focussing on technology advances that will enable operators to service the growing demands for mobile connectivity.

There were two strands to the proceedings – Wi-Fi and Small Cells. Originally there had also been plans for a Cloud Radio Access Network (CRAN) strand, but it had been contracted and interwoven with the other strands.

Given that many of the target audience were service providers, it was not surprising that there was much in common between the Wi-Fi and Small Cell strands. The emphasis on needing to ‘densify’ coverage was shared – with Wi-Fi as the ideal for maximising capacity, given the high degree of spectrum use. Coverage in buildings was also an issue, where again Wi-Fi has much to offer. There is an increasing interest in managing Wi-Fi and integrating it into service platforms, alongside licensed network technologies. Other themes included:

• Centralisation of base station functionality – whether for small cells or macro cells, using either fibre or high capacity wireless front haul technologies to link antennas to a central hub. The central hub could be cloud-based ultimately with functionality being provided scalably via software. This offers operating cost savings, yields more efficient coverage and is more flexible to adapt to rapidly evolving market requirements

• Aggregration of bands to increase throughtput - even across traditional licenced /licence-exempt boundaries. Thus Wi-Fi cellular hybrids start to appear in the picture, with integration in the service platform rather than in end-user client devices.

Larkhill’s contribution to the event was a presentation on the opportunity of using dynamic spectrum access technology to use spectrum more efficiently, with TV white spaces providing a global opportunity to create a really powerful extension to Wi-Fi. We also highlighted the need to address resiliency, ad-hoc flexibility and coverage – as well as the growing capacity requirements for mobile access networks. You can see a summary of our presentation here.