NEW YORK-The 2.4 GHz unlicensed radio-frequency band is getting a bit crowded these days, with cordless phones, microwave ovens and the new guest, Bluetooth, all tapping into it.
By contrast, the 5 GHz band is wide open territory. The HiperLAN2 Global Forum is at work on implementation specifications that would take advantage of the possibilities of this band, including linkages between interior fixed and exterior mobile wireless networks.
“In the case of 3G, UMTS/GPRS, this could provide an extended service offering of voice and data communications or virtual private network services,” said Martin Johnson, chairman of the Forum.
“Even more important, you could make this transparent to the user whether inside or outside. We are working on a hand-off between the wireless LAN (local area network) and the wide area network. It could be a Bluetooth connection between the cell phone and the laptop (computer), so the cell phone would become like a modem.”
HiperLAN2, approved by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, is today the only LAN standard with access to the free 5 GHz spectrum, which is the same in the United States, Europe and Japan, Johnson said.
The standard offers data speeds of up to 54 megabits per second per channel. It supports various network protocols, including Ethernet, Asynchronous Transfer Mode and Internet Protocol.
“The broad range of companies supporting HiperLAN2 highlights the strength of the standard, which is designed for a variety of environments, from the home to the office to filling in third-generation broadband wireless hot spots,” said Johnson, who is product manager of Wireless LAN Systems for Ericsson Inc., Stockholm.
Other participants in the Forum include Nortel Networks, Lucent Technologies Inc., Bosch Telecom Inc., Nokia Corp., Texas Instruments, Dell Computer, Xilinx Inc. and Telia, the Swedish carrier. The HiperLAN2 Global Forum hopes to attract more telecommunications operators as participants, Johnson said.
“While providing high-bandwidth connectivity ensures its interoperatibility with 3G cellular systems, HiperLAN2 also is complementary to other wireless technologies such as Bluetooth,” said Robert Bielby, director of strategic applications at Xilinx, a semiconductor manufacturer.
In airports, convention centers, legislative chambers and other interior areas that experience heavy demand for data communications, HyperLAN2 can offer a connection “up to 27 times faster than the local area 3G network,” said Marti Franck senior technical adviser of Nortel Networks.
So far, the Broadband Radio Access Networks unit of ETSI has released HiperLAN2 specifications for interior applications, Johnson said. Demonstration products using this standard should be available sometime next year.
“On the public side, some ISPs (Internet service providers) might want to cover certain islands with wireless LANs, and they could also serve as some sort of wireless VPN,” he said.
“We are now looking at what we need to support the ISP case. Everyone wants it. It’s a matter of how long it will take. There are different possibilities for how to solve it.”
