March 13, 2020
In today’s Smart Home, users often grapple with signal range and quality. These concerns will continue to mount as the installed base of connected devices climbs to a projected 75.44 billion worldwide by 2025 – according to Statista’s 2020 report. Mesh Wi-Fi is the solution to overcoming this challenge. In this blog, Tony Testa provides practical advice to enhance the new Smart Home with mesh Wi-Fi systems.
Distributed or mesh Wi-Fi systems include a router that connects to your main modem and multiple satellite router-like devices, or nodes, placed around the home to provide full Wi-Fi coverage. The more nodes, the further the connection spreads.
Today’s mesh networks:
Today’s Smart Homes are crowded with multiple services (i.e., security, lighting, etc.), using various technologies and numerous standards. Historically the gateway device that provided the main internet to the home would transmit the Wi-Fi, but the additional services required several central controllers for each. Moving forward, the gateway device will have many embedded wireless solutions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE), Zigbee and Thread. This will reduce the need for individual central controllers. These same wireless standards and capabilities will be added into the Wi-Fi mesh system (extenders and repeaters).
Because access to the internet/cloud in the home is through an established distributed/mesh Wi-Fi system, additional BLE, Zigbee and Thread systems can utilize the Wi-Fi mesh as backhaul for carrying data. Wi-Fi 6 implementation further facilitates this by enabling 4-times more users and connections, which provides ~4-times faster throughput rates. The added benefit is that it’s highly optimized to be the local area networking system for all these additional services (security, lighting, audio distribution, environmental controls, etc.).
Wi-Fi Tech & Trends
Read other blogs in this series to get practical design advice from Wi-Fi expert Tony Testa.
E-Book: Everything You Need to Know About Future-Proofing Wi-Fi
Here are a few fundamental challenges I’m hearing from Wi-Fi manufacturers:
When using RF components effectively in an application, these individual challenges can be addressed. For example:
Qorvo has focused its connectivity solutions for home wireless system improvements in:
Today, we have an entire portfolio for Wi-Fi 6 solutions covering the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. Using Qorvo RFFE solutions with bandedge or what we call "edgeBoost™" filtering, customers can achieve regulatory compliance at higher power levels across all 2.4 GHz spectrum channels. Additionally, we have cellular and IoT “coexBoost™” filtering RF Front End variants. New developments in diplexers, 5 GHz filtering and 6 GHz solutions further expand our portfolio. Some products to look at on Qorvo.com are:
Part Number | Details |
---|---|
QPF4506 | 5 GHz Wi-Fi 6 Front-End |
QPF4206 | 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Front-End |
QPF4216 | 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6 Front-End |
QPF7219 | 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6 Front-End |
QPF4800 | 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi Dual-Band Front-End |
In addition, we have gateway optimized IoT solutions such as the QPG7015M, providing multiple protocols (BLE/Zigbee/Thread) in a single placement and meeting extended range requirements with +20dBm output power.
Qorvo has a unique capability of leveraging a vast array of technology, component design and integration, with the added ability to merge these system blocks with our IoT solutions. By using this larger technology toolbox, we solve the complex challenges in enabling the Smart Home. We offer advanced options for integration that help reduce size, cost and most importantly cut down time-to-market for our customers – simplifying many complex RF tuning/and layout requirements.
Mesh Wi-Fi systems provide the inherent “back-bone” of in-home connectivity. Today’s network traffic (gaming, video streaming, internet, music, computing, etc.), and additional Smart Home service traffic (voice assistants, security, climate controls, video, audio, etc.) are expanded through advancements in the Wi-Fi 6 standard. The desire to make these mesh devices (gateways, extenders, repeaters, etc.) as sleek and small as possible within the home forces higher levels of integration and improvements in performance. Qorvo continues to invest, develop, and acquire to support our customers’ needs and truly enable the “Smart Home.”
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