Wi-Fi HaLow could be the next IoT enabler

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WiFi HaLow is poised to become the next Wi-Fi protocol for in-house IoT applications due to its low power consumption and long-range Wi-Fi coverage. Here’s why.

Image: Wi-Fi Alliance

Wi-Fi HaLow is a low-power, long-range version of standard Wi-Fi that can penetrate walls and operate on wearable devices. “Wi-Fi HaLow will enable broad adoption of existing Wi-Fi protocols and deliver many of the benefits consumers expect from Wi-Fi today, including multi-vendor interoperability, strong government-grade security, and easy setup,” said Kevin Robinson, senior vice president of marketing at Wi-Fi Alliance, the nonprofit organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark.

Due to these and other factors, Wi-Fi HaLow may also be used in education, smart cities, industrial manufacturing, and healthcare.

“Wi-Fi HaLow is best suited for applications that require low power, longer range and reliable connectivity even in challenging environments – including sensors, personal wearables, utility meters and streaming compressed video from security cameras,” Robinson said.

Immediate candidate devices for Wi-Fi Halow are security cameras and tablets used in industrial environments.

Wi-Fi Halow-enabled devices are also expected to play an important role in smart home environments, which allow consumers to take advantage of their longer range and lower power consumption for applications such as battery-powered cameras, baby video monitors and other smart home products.

In these regards, Wi-Fi Halow is a complementary technology well suited to Wi-Fi 6, an on-premises Wi-Fi protocol that is already being deployed in many schools and is likely to expand into commercial, industrial, and residential IoT applications that require fast data rates and low latency within the four walls of a facility.

“Applications where Wi-Fi Halow like use cases make sense include AR/VR, home security systems with high-resolution video, and remote surgery,” Robinson said.

Implementing Wi-Fi HaLow in industry makes sense because it expands the scope of Wi-Fi applications in the IoT and enables Wi-Fi to become more dominant in the industrial and smart home markets.

“The company has been working on the development of Wi-Fi HaLow chipsets for many years and we expect shipments to exceed 10 million by 2022, with adoption expanding from industrial applications to smart home, smart city and retail markets,” said Robinson.

Is Wi-Fi HaLow on most companies’ IoT roadmaps?

The Wi-Fi Alliance just announced its certification program for products that include Wi-Fi HaLow in November 2021. This means that we are still some time away from widespread adoption and deployment of Wi-Fi HaLow, as products must first be certified.

What does this mean for IT decision makers who already have a ton of IoT technology issues to consider?

1. It is time to put Wi-Fi HaLow on the technology roadmap as it will expand the range of IoT use cases that can occur within the enterprise.

2. It is too early to discuss their Wi-Fi HaLow certification plans with IoT device vendors.

3. IoT has always been concerned about security, but the good news about Wi-Fi HaLow is that it must support the latest WPA3 security, which will add strong security protection to IoT networks.

4. The internal network environment needs to be modified for Wi-Fi HaLow, but since Wi-Fi HaLow is backward compatible with older Wi-Fi protocols, this makes the work easier.

“Wi-Fi HaLow is an open standard that provides more efficient installations without the need for proprietary controllers, hubs or gateways,” said Robinson. “Wi-Fi HaLow networks can be deployed in the presence of existing Wi-Fi 4, Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 networks without interfering with their RF performance, and can easily become part of a complete Wi-Fi portfolio. In this way, Wi-Fi HaLow provides a more comprehensive approach to connectivity and extends current Wi-Fi coverage to hard-to-reach places such as garages, basements, attics, warehouses, factories and large outdoor areas.”