Serhat Erkucuk
This is the first blog post of the Ofinno Next-Gen Wi-Fi Team introducing the ongoing IEEE standards activities and the team’s focus areas of research and development in IEEE standards.
IEEE Computer Society standards are among the most adopted and implemented standards by the industry. Also named as IEEE 802 standards, these standards have been developed for Ethernet, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN), Wireless Regional Area Network (WRAN), and Wireless Coexistence. Among these standards, IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards have been an integral part of almost everyone’s lives in the last two decades. Based on the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard that allows computers, mobile devices, and other related equipment to have wireless connectivity to the Internet, the Wi-Fi technology has been widely used in homes, schools, offices, airports, public transportation, stadiums, parks, and shops globally.
Since the release of the first IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard in 1997, there have been amendments to the standard every couple of years. These standards have been developed in the order of including but not limited to 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11ax with the increasing bandwidth and data rate requirements. Currently, the standardization of the next generation Wi-Fi technology, 802.11be (also officially marketed as Wi-Fi 7 by Wi-Fi Alliance), has been in progress. Since the Project Authorization Request (PAR) approval in March 2019, 802.11be Task Group has been working on developing the draft specification by having offline discussions, weekly teleconferences and bi-monthly meetings. Expected to be finalized in 2024, this new amendment to the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard has been defining Extreme High Throughput (EHT) physical (PHY), and medium access control (MAC) layers capable of supporting a maximum throughput of at least 30 Gbps.
At Ofinno, the Next-Gen Wi-Fi Team members have been conducting research and development mainly on the design of new wireless technologies for IEEE 802.11 WLAN; in addition, they had also earlier contributed to IEEE 802.15 WPAN and IEEE 802.19 Wireless Coexistence. Most recently, the team has been focusing on PHY and MAC layer designs of 802.11be EHT, 802.11bf WLAN sensing, and the WLAN technology beyond 802.11be (later to be officially marketed as Wi-Fi 8 by Wi-Fi Alliance). With the goal of achieving the target system performances for the ongoing and upcoming standards, the team has been proposing inventive and implementable approaches for both PHY and MAC layers. Accordingly, the team closely follows the ongoing IEEE Standards Task Group activities and contributes to the development of the related standards with their proposed novel approaches. Working closely with the Ofinno Legal Team, each invention is meticulously studied, evaluated, and patented, considering the prior art and for the benefit of the upcoming standard.
While this first blog post introduced the ongoing IEEE standards activities and the overview of Ofinno Next-Gen Wi-Fi Team’s focus areas in the standards, stay tuned for future blog posts that explore new technologies, standards, and inventions from the perspective of the Ofinno Next-Gen Wi-Fi Team!
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