Wi-Fi all over

Tam Harbert, Contributing Editor -- EDN, November 1, 2011

As wireless technology moves into just about every aspect of society and industry, Wi-Fi chipsets are going into all sorts of devices—consumer, industrial and specialized niche markets. The explosion in the market challenges even the largest chip vendors, who must keep up with trends and decide which markets to target. It also opens opportunities for small start-ups that can find success by focusing on the right niche markets.

The 802.11 specification was originally designed—more than a decade ago—to define a wireless technology that would replace Ethernet in PCs and networks. Today, Wi-Fi is found in smartphones, tablets, peripherals, and even TVs and set-top boxes. “In the last three years in particular, we’ve seen attach rates on things like ink-jet printers just skyrocket,” said Bart Giordano, director of product marketing for wireless at Marvell. “Attach rates on products like BluRay DVD players and digital TVs are about to experience the same trend.” Wi-Fi also is moving into vertical markets such as health care and utilities. “It has applications in a number of markets that weren’t envisioned even a couple of years ago,” said Jagdish Rebello, senior director and principal analyst of communications and consumer electronics at IHS iSuppli.

This proliferation is driven by several trends. Wi-Fi has developed along two different dimensions that are now converging, said Michael Hurlston, general manager and senior vice president of wireless LAN business at Broadcom. The first is the technical dimension, in which the basic technology has progressed through several generations, including 802.11a, b, g, and n. In the next year to 18 months, the industry is expected to start moving to the next generation, 802.11ac. Recently, however, Wi-Fi has also expanded in the application dimension, said Hurlston, moving from its core networking market into other uses on mobile devices, consumer electronics products and embedded industrial equipment.

One reason for the expansion of applications is the Wi-Fi Alliance, which has been proactive and aggressive in promoting the technology and working on interoperability and application standards for specific markets, noted Filomena Berardi, senior market analyst at IMS Research. Indeed, the Wi-Fi Alliance recently surpassed 11,000 Wi-Fi certifications, and expects to certify 3,000 new Wi-Fi products in 2011, according to Kevin Robinson, marketing manager at the Wi-Fi Alliance.

And now that Wi-Fi has been incorporated into most smartphones, the technology has reached a tipping point in consumer electronics, said Berardi. As consumers quickly embrace smartphones, a ready-made infrastructure emerges on which to expand Wi-Fi use in all sorts of consumer electronics applications, she said.

This market fragmentation opens opportunities for smaller companies. Redpine Signals Inc initially struggled to sell into the mobile phone market. Despite having good technology, it was hard to find an entrée because the company was so small and the major handset manufacturers already had established relationships with larger Wi-Fi chip vendors, said Venkat Mattela, chairman and CEO. “In 2008, we created the lowest power Wi-Fi chip for mobile phones,” he said. “Still, we were not able to sell a single chip.”

Then Redpine Signals realized that the emerging “Internet of things” was creating lots of smaller markets for Wi-Fi: industrial, medical, building automation, smart energy. The company revamped its strategy to target them. Mattela refers to his market as “an inch deep and a mile wide.” The company has partnered with microcontroller vendors, including Freescale Semiconductor and Renesas Electronics, developing an approach that makes it easy for embedded designers to incorporate Wi-Fi into their products. In September, Redpine and Atmel announced modules and kits to help designers integrate Wi-Fi with Atmel microcontrollers.

The fragmentation could be a challenge to large, traditional Wi-Fi chip vendors, who must continue to develop for the markets with huge volumes while also keeping tabs on markets that are small today but may become the next big volume market. In addition, Wi-Fi is moving into markets that were previously the domain of other wireless technologies, said Rebello. These include Bluetooth in consumer applications, ZigBee in the smart energy market and even proprietary wireless technologies in industrial embedded markets. In each case, companies need to determine what flavor of Wi-Fi to incorporate and whether to include other wireless implementations on their chips, as well.

Some of the biggest opportunities that large vendors see are three application-specific standards emerging from the Wi-Fi Alliance: Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Display, and HotSpot 2.0. While some of these leverage certain IEEE standards, these Wi-Fi Alliance programs are designed to help vendors deliver products targeted to specific market needs, said Robinson. “We determine which pieces of the IEEE standards are relevant to the market today, to hit specific market windows, and then we work to develop products to meet those market needs and windows.”

Wi-Fi Direct enables Wi-Fi devices like mobile phones to connect directly, peer-to-peer, without needing an access point or router. The idea is to allow consumers to transfer data between devices more easily. The Wi-Fi Alliance began certifying Wi-Fi Direct products in October 2010. As of the end of September 2011, it had certified nearly 300 products, 53% of which were display devices and 30% mobile phones, according to Robinson. The predominance of display devices is probably because of a related enhancement, called Wi-Fi Display, which builds on Wi-Fi Direct to enable the streaming of video from handheld and other devices to large displays, such as TVs. Still in development, W-iFi Display will probably enter the certification phase sometime in 2012, Robinson estimated.

“The industry is hoping that the wireless display application will be the killer app for Wi-Fi Direct,” said Berardi.

Meanwhile, vendors are also intent on HotSpot 2.0, also called Stadium Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi Alliance is working on technology that would allow Wi-Fi devices to easily and securely connect at hotspots by streamlining network selection and access. It plans to launch a certification program in mid-2012.