17th October 2014

Wi-Fi up to five times faster coming in 2015

Samsung Electronics has developed a new way of transmitting Wi-Fi data five times faster than was previously possible. The new technology is expected to be available in consumer devices as early as 2015.

If you've been to a cafe or other public place recently and been frustrated at the slow speed of Wi-Fi, a new breakthrough by Samsung Electronics may soon change that. Researchers at the company have this week achieved the development of 60GHz Wi-Fi allowing transfer rates of 4.6Gbps, or 575MB per second. That is 5.3 times faster than the previous maximum speed for consumer devices (866Mbps, or 108MB per second).

Today's generation of Wi-Fi uses the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz areas of the radio spectrum. The 60GHz band is currently unlicensed and offers major potential, but previous attempts to exploit it have failed to send data over significant distances, due to path loss and weak penetration properties. Samsung has overcome these issues through a combination of millimetre-wave circuit design, a high performance modem and wide-coverage beam-forming antenna. This eliminates co-channel interference, regardless of the number of devices using the same network.

Commercialisation is expected in 2015, with Samsung planning integration into a wide variety of products – including audio visual, medical devices and telecommunications equipment. It will also help to spur the Internet of Things.

“Samsung prides itself at being of the forefront of technology innovation, and is delighted to have overcome the barriers to the commercialisation of 60GHz millimetre-wave band Wi-Fi technology,” said Paul Templeton, General Manager of Samsung Networks UK. “This breakthrough has opened the door to exciting possibilities for Samsung’s next-generation devices, and has also changed the face of the future development of Wi-Fi technology, promising innovations that were not previously within reach.”

To give an idea of the speed: a 1GB movie will take less than three seconds to transfer between devices, while uncompressed high-definition videos could easily be streamed from mobile devices to TVs in real-time without any delay.

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