WBA white papers

Wi-Fi 6 Trial Report – Industrial Manufacturing

Mettis Aerospace worked with Broadcom, Cisco, iBwave and Intel to deploy Wi-Fi 6 in a dense industrial environment with heavy metal, high temperatures and moving machinery, where previous generations of Wi-Fi did not perform well. The Wi-Fi 6 trial demonstrated much improved reliability, coverage, throughput and lower latency for supporting mission critical applications.

Wi-Fi 6 Trial Report – High-density malls

SK Telecom deployed Wi-Fi 6 to improve connectivity for consumers, increase quality of experience (QoE) for densely populated areas and provide high throughput for immersive media services. Wi-Fi 6 reduced latency by 80 percent, reduced throughput fluctuation, and improved service reliability to customers anywhere, anytime, throughout the mall.

Wi-Fi 6 Trial Report – Education in rural areas

C-DOT and Intel deployed Wi-Fi 6 in a rural school trial in India to enhance new learning technologies, and improve signal coverage and streaming performance. Wi-Fi 6 improved throughput by more than 50 percent throughout the network.

Wi-Fi 6 Trials Report

WBA’s Wi-Fi 6 program aims to drive the adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and has previously released the Wi-Fi 6 Deployment Guidelines white paper, which outlines different vertical use cases and and provides guidance on best practices for deployments. WBA provides a platform for end-to-end Wi-Fi 6 trials based on a comprehensive test plan to demonstrate key Wi-Fi 6 capabilities in end-to-end real life networks and showcase the readiness for carrier Wi-Fi deployments across different geographies and various key verticals.

Wi-Fi Opportunities for Connected Vehicles

The connected and autonomous driving vehicles market is driving the evolution of the vehicular industry and is growing at an eight-year compound annual growth rate of 22.3%, i.e., 5 times faster than the overall car market. The business opportunity for connected vehicles is significant, with the global market expected to grow to over $212 billion by 2027.

WBA’s latest white paper, “Wi-Fi Opportunities for Connected Vehicles – Demand for Data and Multi-Access Edge Computing”, evaluates the data exchange requirements for enabling the various connected vehicle use cases, irrespective of the choice of the communication technology and the spectrum band to be used, re-enforcing the need for multi-access edge computing architectures for connected vehicles. The gaps and opportunities for Wi-Fi in such architectures are analyzed and the WBA’s potential role in addressing them is outlined.

In-Home Wi-Fi – Use Cases Public Executive Summary

The WBA recently outlined the recommended industry guidelines and best practices for operators to achieve high-quality In-Home Wi-Fi. With building construction and layout having a material impact on coverage of Wi-Fi within a home, it was identified that homes increasingly require Wi-Fi networks comprised of multiple access points. The complexity of delivery and management of these access points can ultimately impact performance and customer satisfaction.

In the latest stage of WBA’s In-Home Wi-Fi program, we are building on this previous report with the goal of extending it to define the standards that create the ultimate in-home Wi-Fi experience. The following executive summary provides an understanding of its scope, use cases, and path towards interoperability testing.

The In-Home Multi-AP Use Case Scope Document is brought to you by WBA Next Gen Work Group – In-Home Wi-Fi Project Team. Please contact us to find out more about the full document available to WBA members.

Wi-Fi Sensing

Wi-Fi Sensing is a new technology which enables motion detection, gesture recognition as well as biometric measurement by using existing Wi-Fi signals. It creates opportunities for service providers within the home security, health care, enterprise, and building automation/management markets and many more.

Wi-Fi Sensing technology and its applications are new with no standard that is specific to this technology. While some applications can be enabled using existing standards, there are technology gaps that limit the range of applications. Some of these gaps may be addressed via proprietary means, however such an approach would inhibit interoperability, integration, and deployment. Alternatively, there could be opportunities for the introduction of new capabilities into the Wi-Fi standards. Standard support would allow for more efficient handling of existing use-cases and enable new use-cases previously not possible.

This Wi-Fi Sensing Whitepaper provides an overview of the Wi-Fi Sensing technology, classifies the Wi-Fi Sensing use cases and requirements, and identifies the gaps in Wi-Fi standards which would lead to the enhancement of the technology and ease of deployment if those gaps are addressed. Furthermore, the paper shares a Home Monitoring case study as an example application is presented, examining topics related to testing.

Wi-Fi & LoRaWAN® Deployment Synergies

The Wi-Fi & LoRaWAN® Deployment Synergies white paper illustrates new business opportunities for Mobile operators, enterprises, cities and other key Internet of Things (IoT) market players that are created when Wi-Fi networks that are traditionally built to support critical IoT are merged with LoRaWAN® networks. This paper summarizes the strengths of each technology, their individual positions in the IoT ecosystem, state their complementary nature, the way that both technologies can be easily deployed simultaneously and provide testimonials.

When utilized in conjunction with one another, Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN networks optimize a number of IoT use cases, including Smart Building/Smart Hospitality, Residential Connectivity, Automotive & Smart Transportation and many more.

This paper showcases to Wi-Fi network owners and/or network service providers how LoRaWAN^® can be deployed on the top of an existing Wi-Fi network and, as a complement, will allow for operational costs optimization.

RAN Convergence

The WBA & NGMN Joint Task Force: RAN Convergence White Paper explores the importance of existing and future Wi-Fi and cellular convergence, highlighting techniques that enable convergence and identifying solutions to bridge technology gaps – critically this is a major step towards realizing the full benefits of the 5G vision enabled by Wi-Fi.

The paper outlines how mobile operators will benefit from the convergence of Wi-Fi and 5G by gaining improved visibility into Wi-Fi networks, affording them the ability to control customer experience, deliver better services to customers and provide enterprise Wi-Fi network management solutions to enterprise customers. Wi-Fi operators, meanwhile, will benefit from convergence by gaining improved visibility and transition management as they operate overlapping cellular and Wi-Fi networks, ultimately resulting in an improved user experience. Additionally, enterprise Wi-Fi networks will gain the ability to access operator-provided 5G services.

Previously WBA has outlined the new business opportunities created through the convergence of Wi-Fi and 5G – this paper outlines the ‘how’ at the network and RAN layers, we can enable these opportunities including enterprise use cases, manufacturing, public hotspots and residential applications. We outline how a new set of 5G use cases and verticals will require combined resources from both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. This will provide cost-effective solutions that meet diverse sets of requirements on throughput, latency, connection density, coverage, availability and reliability. This is especially important for smartphones that carry a significant amount of data traffic by accessing Wi-Fi. Convergence of Wi-Fi and 5G will lead to better user experience for smartphone customers and create new business opportunities for both Wi-Fi and mobile operators. As Wi-Fi 6 deployments start to mature, then convergence benefits are manifold and to benefits from the maximum ROI operators will need to address a number of challenges that exist when integrating Wi-Fi and cellular networks in enterprise, residential and public Wi-Fi deployments. In particular, the paper explores the benefits of creating a standardized interface between Wi-Fi and cellular networks to improve end-to-end network performance, elevate user experience and, ultimately, empower both mobile and Wi-Fi operators to create new business opportunities utilizing the converged technologies.

Captive Network Portal Standards

The Captive Network Portal Standards white paper defines some existing use cases, aligns user experience (UX), presents practices to consider and provides suggested guidelines for future features that can be adopted as a unified standard by client devices, client manufacturers and network hardware manufacturers.

This paper includes:

· How the current operating systems behave by Client, OS, and Version

· Key use cases for NGH/Passpoint™ with monetization opportunities

· Illustration of pre-authorization connectivity & onboarding process

· Recommendation for enhancing clients and onboarding user experience and future features