Redefining connectivity: Exploring Wi-Fi®’s 25 year journey

No other wireless communications technology has left as deep of an impression as Wi-Fi^®. From its humble beginnings 25 years ago to the ubiquitous connectivity technology that enables widespread, untethered communication today, Wi-Fi has far exceeded initial expectations. Read on for our conversation with LitePoint President John Lukez for more insight into how Wi-Fi became one of the most impactful innovations of our lifetime. 

What are some of the ways Wi-Fi has evolved from its early days? 

One of the biggest changes we’ve seen comes from Wi-Fi’s ability to untether the world from what had previously been a very cumbersome user experience. I still remember Ethernet cables – and even RJ11 dial-up modem cables – snaking across my living room floor from my laptop. Wi-Fi upended all that and transformed into a life-changing technology for users around the world.

Over the past five years, we have continued to see Wi-Fi deliver significant increases in speed. Nowhere is this more evident than with this year’s transition to Wi-Fi 7, which enables speeds up to 36 Gbit/s – or up to three times faster than Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. 

How has Wi-Fi impacted the connectivity industry?

Wi-Fi ushered in a more consumer-friendly mindset to the wireless communications industry due to its ease of use and seamless interoperability with laptops and access points (APs). And, on a more personal note, Wi-Fi was instrumental to the founding of our company – as a test provider, the cost pressures of a rapidly evolving consumer technology like Wi-Fi shaped what LitePoint would become. 

A major point of differentiation with Wi-Fi is that we weren’t designing test equipment for a highly regulated telecoms industry, as was the case with 2G and subsequent cellular standards. Instead, we were designing equipment to meet the demanding economic price points of a diverse and unregulated market. Frankly, this required that we approach Wi-Fi testing from a different angle – a perspective that in the early days felt a little like the Wild West given that we were developing test regimens for unlicensed, unmanaged spectrum compared to a relatively rigid, standards-oriented cellular technology.

As a point of comparison, the cellular (3GPP) world has thousands of accepted test cases, which adds enormous certification costs to cellular products and can easily take more than a year to complete. The creation of Wi-Fi Alliance^®, on the other hand, allowed the Wi-Fi industry to innovate quickly and ensure interoperability at a much lower cost than the cellular industry. This is a key reason why Wi-Fi has become universal across so many products with a wide range of price points. 

From a manufacturing test perspective, LitePoint worked with leading silicon providers over the years to standardize various IEEE-based tests from existing 802.11 standards. This allowed us to create industry benchmarks that ensured transmit and receive performance using a non-signaling method (i.e., only testing the physical layer). The cellular industry would eventually adopt non-signaling approaches as well, but not until around 2012. That was nearly 10 years after the Wi-Fi community pioneered the approach, which helped lower product costs by reducing test equipment costs and shortening test times.

What do you feel are some of the greatest achievements in the history of Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi’s primary achievement is becoming the world’s most ubiquitous communication standard – today, it carries more than half of all data traffic. And, in 2020, Wi-Fi reached another milestone with the opening of the 6 GHz spectrum band, which more than doubled the spectrum available for Wi-Fi and unleashed capacity that will fuel the next decade of growth in adoption and use cases. 

With the roll-out of Wi-Fi 7, we can now also look forward to dramatically reduced latency – well into the low-single-millisecond range – which will be a key enabler of time-sensitive networks like Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) devices. And despite such impressive performance improvements, Wi-Fi 7 will be significantly easier to deploy while still co-existing with legacy Wi-Fi technologies.

How does spectrum advocacy affect Wi-Fi users?

Wi-Fi Alliance^®’s spectrum advocacy has directly resulted in more countries adopting 6 GHz spectrum, and consumers are seeing the benefits of the increased amount of unlicensed spectrum available for Wi-Fi devices. As we continue to rely on more Wi-Fi connected devices in our homes, businesses, and factories, this extra spectrum will support the high bandwidth and low-latency connections that consumers expect. The first tranche of unlicensed spectrum powered Wi-Fi for the first 25 years, and this new spectrum will allow Wi-Fi to grow unfettered for another 25 years, enabling applications we haven’t thought of yet.

Evolution of Wi-Fi Generations (LitePoint)

What events or devices do you feel have been a tipping point in terms of the proliferation of wireless connectivity? 

The early days of Wi-Fi saw an influx of semiconductor companies, from start-ups to more established players. Since then, the space has consolidated to the point where today there are primarily three to four major players providing Wi-Fi silicon. That means we’ve lost a lot of the native chip-level engineering expertise that brought Wi-Fi to market in the first place.

The upshot is that manufacturers in this space today aren’t necessarily wireless or radio specialists. They’re looking for plug-and-play solutions to equip their products with Wi-Fi capabilities – think of the proliferation of IoT products, from voice-controlled speakers to lawn sprinkler controllers. That shift from discrete components to highly integrated Wi-Fi modules means that device makers can simply drop Wi-Fi capability into a rapidly growing array of IoT-connected devices.

Another important distinction is that Wi-Fi has enabled consumer electronics products to add an Internet connection at a cost-point no other standard can match, especially when compared to LTE or 5G technologies that require more licensing, and often, a monthly data plan.

What are your predictions for the future of Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi will continue to evolve every three to four years. With Wi-Fi 7 coming to market, we're already talking about Wi-Fi 8 within the standards body. Beyond that, people are talking about future versions of Wi-Fi, which could reach into the 60 GHz band and is basically a millimeter-wave technology that opens up multiple GHz of available unlicensed spectrum and some very high data rates.

This is just another indication that the Wi-Fi market continues to move rapidly, which impacts test equipment strategies from manufacturing to early design validation and debugging. The fast pace of development means that companies often need support early on, even before the standards are fully developed, so they have the equipment and tools they need to bring their designs to market.

As the industry evolves from Wi-Fi 6 to Wi-Fi 7, we’re also seeing an emphasis on improving quality of service (QoS). Prior to about 2019, the industry’s primary focus was on expanding data throughput. That’s changed over the past five or six years as people began to realize just how much we all depend on Wi-Fi. While increasing data rates will always remain an important goal for the industry, QoS is taking its rightful place as a means to guarantee network resilience – much like what has happened in cellular technologies as they evolved from 1G to 5G.

LitePoint has continued to innovate and help our customers prepare for these advances. Progress is only accelerating given the certification of Wi-Fi 7 and early discussions around the Wi-Fi 8 specification, all of which will continue to cement Wi-Fi’s position as the fastest, most reliable, and cost-effective wireless standard we all depend on.