Inside the ultra-high-speed wireless home wars

The clear winner of the home networking wars of the past few years has undoubtedly been Wi-Fi. The sheer number of Wi-Fi embedded devices, from laptops to smartphones, is increasingly being joined by the pack of new consumer electronics device categories with Wi-Fi, such as smart TVs and over-the-top set tops, which means the technology isn't going anywhere soon. But it’s not alone, either. The Wi-Fi industry has done a good job of evolving, with improvements in speed, range and quality of service. But in-home distribution of rich-media content, such as uncompressed HD video, is growing, and that content would stretch the limits of what Wi-Fi can do. In some cases, it would be impossible for existing Wi-Fi technologies, such as 802.11n, to handle, even when using dual-band MIMO solutions. The good news is that there are a bevy of emerging technologies in various states of evolution. Ultra-high-speed local wire-replacement technologies such as WiGig would enable new use cases that are impossible today with Wi-Fi. Potentially, these new technologies could even replace the current generation of Wi-Fi based on 802.11n.