Evolution and Impact of Wi-Fi Technology and Applications: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

The IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless local area networking (WLAN), commercially known as Wi-Fi, has become a necessity in our day-today life. Over a billion Wi-Fi access points connect close to hundred billion of IoT devices, smart phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, smart TVs, video cameras, monitors, printers, and other consumer devices to the Internet to enable millions of applications to reach everyone, everywhere. The evolution of Wi-Fi technology also resulted in the first commercial piloting of spread spectrum, high speed optical communications, OFDM, MIMO and mmWave pulse transmission technologies, which then became more broadly adopted by cellular phone and wireless sensor networking industries. The popularity and widespread Wi-Fi deployment in indoor areas further motivated innovation in opportunistic cyberspace applications that exploit the ubiquitous Wi-Fi signals. The RF signal radiated from Wi-Fi access points creates an "RF cloud" accessible to any Wi-Fi equipped device hosting or supporting these opportunistic applications. Wi-Fi positioning and location intelligence were the first popular opportunistic applications of Wi-Fi's RF cloud. Today, researchers are investigating opportunistic applications of Wi-Fi signals for gesture and motion detection as well as authentication and security. This paper provides a holistic overview of the evolution of Wi-Fi technology and its applications as the authors experienced it in the last few decades.

Understanding of RF Cloud Interference Measurement and Modeling

“…The new emerging expensive bands such as PCS bands became privately owned smaller back yards with permissions for much higher transmission power to cover metropolitan areas for expanding a mature industry such as cellular with an exponential growth in revenue. The trend of low power transmission for unlicensed operation continued by release of UWB spectrum at 3.1-10.6 GHz in early 2000s and mm-Wave at 57-64 GHz in 2010s nurturing cyberspace commercial applications for short-range wireless communications and radars [7].…”

“…All cellular base station antennas are deployed outdoors, except for some femto-cell antennas that are deployed indoors. In indoors, femto-cells compete with Wi-Fi, which carries 70% of the total IP traffic without a need for subscription to a cellular service provider [7]. These very small cells transmit at low power of approximately 100 mW and they are barriered by an additional 10-20 loss to penetrate to outdoors containing their interference inside the building.…”

“…In most other military and commercial positioning and navigation applications we can often compromise on the less expensive waiting time. The first popular positioning system for military, public safety, and commerce, the GPS, covers approximately 99% of the vast outdoor areas on the globe [4] but not indoors, where approximately 80% of the IP traffic is generated to enable smart world applications [7]. In open outdoor areas, the GPS can achieve precision of approximately 1m for military applications, but in multipath urban areas, where all the smart world popular applications take place, GPS has a precision of 10-15 m [5].…”

“…In wireless networking, over a billion Wi-Fi access points, millions of 5G cellular base stations, and several billion smart phones carrying 5G cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth chipsets for communications to enable formation of the IoT to communicate with close to hundred billion IoT devices and construct the smart world. The RF signal radiating from these devices forms an RF cloud enabling emergence of numerous cyberspace applications for positioning [6], human-computer-interfacing, gesture and motion detection, and authentication and security [3,7]. The RF cloud of each wireless device also contributes co-and crosschannel interference to other wireless devices in its area of coverage in and around its frequency of operation.…”

Antennas Performance Comparison of Multi-Bands for Optimal Outdoor and Indoor Environments Wireless Coverage

“…In recent years, wireless communication technology has developed rapidly and has brought many updates and challenges in the design of wireless devices, as well as the introduction of high-performance antennas that help improve communication between users in various environments, whether indoor, outdoor or mixed [1]. In addition, the design of the wireless communication networks has become more developed, complexity and safe in various methods about how to effectively manage the network which is increasingly driven attention for the development of the network management systems [2].…”