WiFi Key to the Smart Home of the Future

As operators continue to transition to all-IP, with the vision of a highway for driving myriad services into the home, WiFi eventually will become the backbone of the home network and the preferred way to connect devices due to the mobility component, said John Sweeney, vice president of technology for SMC Networks."You no longer are bound by where the connector is in the home. There are devices in the home that may have been underserved by traditional retail routers," Sweeney said.For WiFi to be an effective enabler of networking, range is "extremely" important. It is up to the gateway device to provide this range, Sweeney said. Clients - such as cell phones, iTouches, and other portable devices - have low-power, lower-cost radios. "(So) the access point has to have the bells and whistles.""The mindset is changing," he added. "It is a lot wiser to invest dollars into the gateway and access point so the clients don't have to be very expensive .... It then falls on the gateway and access points to provide better coverage inside."Specifically, the next-gen 802.11ac WiFi standard will bring with it an increase in bandwidth, higher modulation densities and greater range. As the standard is verified as interoperable among silicon vendors, it will become the mainstream for 5 Gbps radios, while 802.11n (as the 2.4 Gbps operating standard) will be utilized in devices that can support both, Sweeney said. "This way the device can switch between them to use whichever signal better takes advantage of the bandwidth that is available inside the home."Switching gears, from an application perspective, Sweeney said services like medical monitoring and home automation are beginning to catch the imagination of consumers. In part, this is because of the in-roads being made with home security products. He predicted this coming year will be one where cable operators, if they already haven't started organizing a home security offering, will be "jumping on the bandwagon.""It is a perfect business model for them," Sweeney said. "They can leverage their network, and it is a monthly revenue type of service .... There is tremendous opportunity to go and not only win business from competitors, but to reach into homes that don't have security today. As long as they are a broadband customer, the operator can offer different levels of home security that are not available through traditional channels."He added, however, that home automation and medical monitoring are riskier because they don't follow an existing model for cable operators. The former, for example, is more complicated from an installation standpoint, and medical monitoring would involve having partners outside of the industry. "There will be a couple of years of ramp-up for home security before (cable operators) will look into the next thing," Sweeney said.Monta Monaco Hernon is a free-lance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].