The Role of WiFi in IoT

The trend to support a diversity of connectivity under a common platform is not confined to wireless broadband. As the Internet of Things (IoT) gathers pace, there will be far greater demand for machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, many of them wireless. These will have even greater varieties of performance requirements, reflecting the vast number of different Applications that may emerge under the umbrella of IoT.

No single technology will address all these requirements, and there is a long list of wireless IoT protocols. This is likely to consolidate over time, but there will certainly be a need for at least one open, standardized technology for several key IoT profiles. These profiles vary by the degree to which they support:

• Ultra-low-power vs moderate power
• Long-range vs local range vs very short range
• Low data rate vs moderate data rate
• Ultra-low latency vs low latency
• Critical availability vs standard availability
• Unlicensed vs licensed spectrum

(Note: Some proprietary protocols are likely to continue to be used in specialist environments like public safety or railways.)

WiFi

WiFi has the advantage of addressing a very wide variety of profiles because of the proliferation of its family of standards. This means it will play a role in most IoT environments, alone or interworking with more specialized protocols, or with cellular. Some IoT applications, such as vehicular services, or video-based apps like connected security cameras, will need the bandwidth of the wireless broadband network, implemented to enable other requirements like low latency (In critical environments this may take place in a private network or slice).

WiFi is uniquely placed to support broadband and narrowband IoT applications from a common platform that can work at varying levels of power consumption and signal range. The next release of 5G standards, Release 16, will prioritize IoT-focused capabilities such as latency below four milliseconds and very high availability, to support emerging cases in the URLLC (ultra-reliable low latency communications) category.

Relative Positioning of Selected IoT-Focused Wireless Technologies by Capabilities