According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, 2023 is set to be a transformational year for Wi-Fi. The industry is expected to see new use cases, innovation and plenty of opportunities for growth. Needless to say, our Wi-Fi experts here at Geekabit are excited about what’s to come!
Despite socio-economic disruption on a global scale, the progress of Wi-Fi has raced ahead in recent years. In fact, is there a wireless technology that has advanced faster than Wi-Fi has recently? We’d go as far as to say probably not.
To further get to grips with the Wi-Fi trends and see the opportunities all mapped out, head to the Wi-Fi Alliance’s recently released blog.
The great thing about Wi-Fi is that its wireless arsenal keeps growing, which in turn leads to more opportunities for innovation and growth.
Wi-Fi and Matter
One of these recently added wireless standards is Matter. Wi-Fi is an intrinsic part of the new Matter standard for IoT. We’ve blogged before about Matter and its role in Smart Home standards. We can see that 2023 will be the beginning of an interoperable smart home era. You can read more about Matter from the Wi-Fi Alliance’s stance here.
Wi-Fi and Matter go hand in hand perfectly. Matter offers the interoperability, and the Wi-Fi delivers standardised and secure IP-native connectivity for IoT devices across the board.
Most use cases will be supported, and whilst it will begin with smart home IoT, future years will see it expanding into industry and enterprise spaces.
Wi-Fi HaLow
Last year we also saw a bit of a breakthrough with Wi-Fi HaLow. This is still little known so if you’re wondering what is Wi-Fi HaLow – It operates in the 900MHz band, offering twice the range, a more robust connection and greater power efficiency than the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. It’s known as IEEE 802.11ah and you’re likely to see more of it in 2023.
It’s actually been defined as a Wi-Fi standard and certificated by the Wi-Fi Alliance since 2026, but after financing on a large scale in 2022, the first Wi-Fi HaLow device was launched at the beginning of this year. The device was a security camera purported to have obstacle-penetrating signal and battery life able to last years.
We’re really excited to see what’s more to come from Wi-Fi HaLow – Keep your eyes peeled!
Wi-Fi and the Expansion of the 6GHz Band
Another leap forward in the world of Wi-Fi in 2022 and set to continue this year was the acceleration and global adoption of the 6GHz band. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, this new band is available in 60 countries with more than 1200 Wi-Fi 6E devices launched in commercial markets.
For industries that require Wi-Fi for stadiums, arenas, campus networks and healthcare, the market for Wi-Fi 6E is set to expand. Due to their need for high-density connectivity applications and support, we’d expect to see Wi-Fi 6E become a big part of these networks.
However, despite there being 1200 Wi-Fi 6E devices (according to Intel) not all of these commercially available devices are Wi-Fi Certified. This is an integral part of Wi-Fi as an eco-system so we’d expect to see more products on the market with Wi-Fi certification.
Wi-Fi and Location Based Services
Location Based Services are also worth a quick mention when talking about Wi-Fi innovations and things to keep an eye on during 2023.
As with most things Wi-Fi, a lot of effort goes into constantly developing and improving the devices and standards available on the market.
These improvements and innovations in 802.11 standards-based tech will mean that Wi-Fi based location services will be driven down to as small as 10cm accuracy in the future.
Watch this space!
