Wi-fi technology will experience a significant speed increase within a year, according to wireless vendor Strix Systems.
Speaking at the NetEvents telecoms conference in Capri last week, Strix claimed that customers will soon be able to buy equipment that supports data transfer rates up to 400Mbps.
The key to such high speeds is MIMO multiple antenna technology, a wireless standard that offers faster speeds by sending information across multiple data streams. MIMO takes advantage of multi-path distortion, which occurs when Wi-Fi radio signals interfere with each other, causing noise. This can happen when there is more than one antenna within close proximity, perhaps attached to the same mesh node.
MIMO technology incorporates the interference and uses it to boost the existing signal, enabling much greater bandwidth. Its high speeds are suitable for applications such as real-time video streaming over wireless.
Strix has already developed and deployed technology that has a link speed of 108Mbps with a throughput of 33Mbps, which was recently implemented in Barajas airport in Madrid to support video surveillance streaming over a Wi-Fi network.
Strix has won a contract to provide the equipment for secure video streaming for the Metropolitan Police of Tempe, California. The police are using mesh video surveillance equipment to send pictures of suspects to police PDAs. They are also using the equipment to read number plates using recognition software and Wi-Fi video cameras, according to Matt Holdrege, systems engineer for Strix Systems.
Holdrege added that Strix's MIMO equipment supports 802.1x, which allows securely encrypted data to be transmitted over wireless.
