People's living environments have changed from the ancient caves to the buildings, mansions, and skyscrapers along with the evolution of the technological civilization. Homes are no longer just shelters or recreation areas for listening to music or watching TV. We have now entered a new era where low-cost, low-power, high-density, miniaturized wireless connectivity solutions are the norm. We can combine all ICT devices at home using multi-screen cloud applications, such as those for automatic appliances, remote voice and gesture control, and wearable devices. These innovations will give birth to more wireless applications and create unlimited business opportunities.
Definitions of homes and the evolution and evolvement of designs
Vijay Nagarajan, Director of Product Marketing for the Wireless Connectivity Group of Broadcom Corporation, noted in a recently speech how human habitations have evolved from the caves in 100,000 BC to the common three-story brick buildings in the early 20th century, which later evolved into taller buildings with elevators, and then multi-floor skyscrapers that were connected by foot bridges.
In addition to the residential patterns, people's demand for audio-visual content has also been growing rapidly. According to a May 2013 Cisco VNI research, it is estimated that the total global Internet traffic bandwidth will reach up to 786Tera bps by 2017, which is equivalent to having 720 million people streaming HD (1280X720p) videos simultaneously or having video clips with lengths totaling five million years played through the Internet each month. By the end of 2017, the total global Internet traffic will reach 1.4 Zettabytes.
Nagarajan cited a well-known smart home in 2014 as an example to explain the concept: a smart home generally has a 50-inch or larger LCD TV with a Blu-ray player in the TV cabinet, and the air conditioning, lighting and curtains are all controlled through touch-enabled human-machine interfaces. According to predictions made by research institutions such as ABI and Juniper Research in 2013, a total of 70 million wearable devices will be sold by 2017, and a total of 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to each other by 2020.
Accordingly, Broadcom estimates that in 2020, smart homes not only will have connected TVs, desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones; even the washing machines, refrigerators, ovens, cooktops, kitchens, etc. will all be connected to the Internet and interconnected to each other wirelessly.
As we approach the Internet of Things, connectivity is vital
Nagarajan indicated that connectivity is vital regardless whether it is through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC or MCU; and they must satisfy the unique features of low-power, low-cost, and smaller size. Broadcom proposed the Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (WICED) platform concept in April 2013 to provide customers with a comprehensive flexible and customizable solution to help build a broader Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem.
At present, WICED comprises three application platforms: WICED Bridge, WICED Beacon, and WICED Audio. Whether it is for health care, home automation, or wearable devices, WICED is able to provide complete application solutions.
Nagarajan played a short WICED video to introduce the states of home networking applications, including: gesture-control smart rings developed by Nod Labs; Samsung's Galaxy Gear smart watch and smartphone remote-controlled air-conditioning systems; the Leap PAD Ultra Wi-Fi-enabled low-power education tablets for children; Nest Labs' mobile phone-controlled smoke and lighting controllers, as well as self-learning temperature controls; the MyQ Garage smart garage sensors developed by Chamberlain Company with which users can open/close the garage door remotely using a smartphone and receive alerts when the garage has been broken into; the Wi-Fi home control system developed by Honeywell whereby uses can use a tablet/cell phone to control home lighting, air conditioning, as well as gardening automation where the paths of sprinkler sprays can be adjusted through the Internet; and the LIFX LED lamps whereby the color temperatures, light colors, and brightness, and the switching on/off can be controlled via a mobile phone and Wi-Fi.
Routers - the nerve center of the connected home
Nagarajan mentioned that the router is the most critical device for home networking. For example, multimedia devices such as multimedia players, remote controls, headphones, digital TVs, network storage devices, home appliances, set-top boxes, 3D glasses, printers, game consoles, Blu-ray Disc players, thin clients, and personal health care devices must use a router as the gateway in order to be interconnected.
At present, routers must be able to transmit video signals and data, meeting the needs of a full range of networking devices, and covering home automation applications as well as behind-the-scene operation features. In the future, routers must have faster connection speeds and broader scopes in order to enable easier connectivity and access to wireless services. And the 5G Wi-Fi wireless networking technology will be the best solution to meet the needs of home networking.
The 5G Wi-Fi wireless networking technology, or officially the 802.11ac standard, uses a higher frequency spectrum and wider operating bandwidth. It has evolved from the BPSK to the 256-QAM modulation and decoding technology, providing the Gbps wireless networking speed. It has also incorporated the STBC as well as LDPC data recovery and beam forming technologies. This technology can provide greater coverage, and stronger reception signals for terminal devices, and increase stability.
Creating the world's fastest wireless router
Nagarajan indicated that Broadcom proposed the 5G Wi-Fi XSTREAM router architecture in April of this year. The router uses the five- core 2.96GHz microprocessor architecture; has two sets of 80MHz operation bandwidth channels; provides two sets of 3x3 11ac and one set of 3x3 11n operation channels; implements six antennas/six data streams; and adopts advanced technologies such as SmartConnect, AnyBeam, and TurboQAM. Compared to that of the commercially available Wi-Fi certified devices, the 5G Wi-Fi XSTREAM router architecture can provide double or even triple the connection performance and can enhance the MU-MIMO multi-antenna multi-user operating performance by up to 50%.
In a comparison demo, Nagarajan connected six devices (two MacBook Pros, one 1x1 11ac Galaxy S4, one 2x2 11ac Galaxy S5, and two 1x1 11n iPhone 5s) to the fastest 802.11ac router on the market today and to a new router based on the 5G WI-FI XSTREAM architecture new router. The devices were connected to the two routers simultaneously. The connection rates for the routers indicated that the XSTREAM architecture can at least double the actual connection speeds for each connected device, and can at least triple the actual connection speeds for each connected devices that support the 3x3(3Streams) 11ac, such as the MacBook Pro.
Finally, Nagarajan mentioned that the six-antenna RT-AC3200 router launched by Asus in June at COMPUTEX TAIPEI is the best example of Broadcom's 5G WI-FI XSTREAM architecture. With its six streams of 11ac (433x6 = 2,600 Mbps) and three streams of 11n/TurboQAM (150x3 x 1.33 = 600 Mbps) total connection bandwidth, it is the wireless router with the fastest connection rate/total bandwidth in the world.
Vijay Nagarajan, Director of Product Marketing for the Wireless Connectivity Group of Broadcom Corporation