WBA Issues Residential Wi-Fi Sensing Deployment Guidelines for Smart Homes & Next Gen In-home Applications

Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) announced the publication of “Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines”, the latest in a series of deployment guidelines designed to help the industry, WBA members and a wide range of enterprises in different vertical industries understand the technology, its use cases, market opportunities and more.

Wi-Fi Sensing is a new and rapidly developing technology that aims to revolutionize how people use Wi-Fi networks around the world. Wi-Fi Sensing leverages existing Wi-Fi signals to sense motion, enabling a suite of new applications and revenue streams in markets such as home security, caregiving, enterprise, small business, and hospitality. Sensing enables Wi-Fi networks to become more interactive, apply new levels of automation, and unearth meaningful new user benefits from broadband services, like convenience, peace of mind, health insights, and privacy. Wi-Fi is a previously untapped source of artificial intelligence for preventative and analytics-driven solutions that could redefine our concept of the “smart” home.

“Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines” focuses on residential applications in single-family homes and multi-dwelling units. The paper covers key topics such as:

• Technological benefits, relevant communication guidelines and constraints
• Environmental and device factors that can impact Sensing, such as how different types of construction materials affect signal strength and propagation in each Wi-Fi band
• Experiments that provide insights into factors such as access point locations, interference, floor plans and more
• General deployment guidelines including access point placement, network topology, floorplan considerations and sensitivity settings

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Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, said: “Wi-Fi Sensing lays the foundation for Wi-Fi service providers to expand into a wide variety of exciting new markets, including health care, home security, building automation and more. ‘Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines’ is the latest example of the WBA’s commitment to providing the marketplace with guidance for developing and deploying innovative Sensing solutions.”

Dr. Taj Manku, Co-founder and CEO at Cognitive Systems, said: “The discussions and the testing facilitated through the WBA Wi-Fi Sensing group not only bring awareness to Wi-Fi Sensing but also improve the technology itself. The next major enhancement to Wi-Fi is Sensing. We hope our work serves as an initial starting point for more stakeholders to get involved in shaping this future as the community continues working toward enhancing Sensing applications and capabilities.”

You can see how the technology is evolving through the lens of the WBA here: “Wi-Fi Sensing — Deployment Guidelines”.

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Dr. Rajkumar Upadhyay, Executive Director C-DOT said: “Wi-Fi technology allows frugal innovations by solving various urban and rural connectivity challenges at low cost. The Wi-Fi sensing technology enables new and evolving use cases which will find immediate application in developed countries. It is interesting to map these technologies to Indian households when the government is pushing to connect every Indian home, urban and rural, with high speed broadband connectivity.”

Sandeep Agrawal, Wi-Fi Sensing Project Co-lead said: “The Wi-Fi Sensing Project group has worked over last three years to bring comprehensive whitepapers around Wi-Fi Sensing Technology including its testing, measurement and deployment aspect of this technology. The papers will supplement the broader community of standardization activities, technology and product development.”

For additional information about Wi-Fi Sensing, download these white papers:

• “Wi-Fi Sensing — A New Technology Emerges” provides an overview of Wi-Fi Sensing technology, classifies its use cases and requirements, and identifies the gaps in Wi-Fi standards that would lead to the enhancement of the technology and ease of deployment if those gaps are addressed. It also includes a home monitoring case study as an example application and explores topics related to testing.
• “Wi-Fi Sensing – Test Methodology and Performance Metrics” provides a detailed set of KPI metrics that can be used to evaluate the performance of a Wi-Fi Sensing-based home monitoring system. The paper includes a number of test cases and scenarios to measure the defined KPIs.

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