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Industry group intros HaLow designation for long-range, low-power WiFi products.
The WiFi Alliance this week unveiled WiFi HaLow, its official designation for long-range, low-power devices aimed at the Internet of Things (IoT).
WiFi HaLow is the public-facing name given to IEEE 802.11 ah, a WiFi technology standard for devices operating on frequencies below 1 GHz.
With nearly twice the range of today’s WiFi, according to the WiFi Alliance, HaLow can not only carry signals further, but can also penetrate walls or other barriers more easily, therefore providing a more reliable connection.
"HaLow is well suited to meet the unique needs of the smart home, smart city, and industrial markets because of its ability to operate using very low power, penetrate through walls, and operate at significantly longer ranges," said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the WiFi Alliance, in a statement on Monday.
HaLow is one of several technologies jockeying for position in the IoT ecosystem. Like HaLow, Long Range (LoRa) WAN technology is also based on unlicensed spectrum, using it to transmit small volumes of data over long distances at low cost, consuming very little power.
There are also several cellular IoT technologies in the works, such as extended coverage GSM (EC-GSM), narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-M.
"WiFi HaLow expands the unmatched versatility of WiFi to enable applications from small, battery-operated wearable devices to large-scale industrial facility deployments – and everything in between," Figueroa declared.
In addition, many HaLow devices are expected to also operate on ‘traditional’ WiFi frequencies in the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands, allowing them to connect to the WiFi ecosystem’s installed base of more than 6.8 billion devices, the WiFi Alliance said.
