Wi-Fi Alliance Introduces Certification Program for Wi-Fi in New Homes

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2Q 2017 | IN-4618

The Wi-Fi Alliance recently unveiled its latest certification program, which seeks to bring about professionally designed, pre-installed Wi-Fi networks into new homes. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design will allow the home construction industry to effectively plan and install Wi-Fi networks into homes as they are built, enabling optimal placement of access points to help eliminate dead spots and ensure robust, reliable, and consistent Wi-Fi coverage throughout the entire home. Additionally, it will even extend beyond to outdoor spaces such as garages and patios.

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Wi-Fi to Be Pre-Installed in New Homes

NEWS


The Wi-Fi Alliance recently unveiled its latest certification program, which seeks to bring about professionally designed, pre-installed Wi-Fi networks into new homes. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design will allow the home construction industry to effectively plan and install Wi-Fi networks into homes as they are built, enabling optimal placement of access points to help eliminate dead spots and ensure robust, reliable, and consistent Wi-Fi coverage throughout the entire home. Additionally, it will even extend beyond to outdoor spaces such as garages and patios.

Ensuring Optimal Wi-Fi Performance

IMPACT


In order to ensure optimal Wi-Fi performance, CAD drawings and heat mapping tools will be utilized to decide upon the ideal placement of access points throughout the home. For homes of up to 2,500 sq ft, a single access point will likely be adequate, while for larger homes, the model will determine exactly how many additional access points are required in order to ensure sufficient performance. By incorporating the Wi-Fi access point placement at the point of planning, access points can be linked together by pre-wired Ethernet or wirelessly through a mesh network. Access points will be placed so that they are easily accessible and can be upgraded down the line.

The prerequisites for Wi-Fi Home Design certification include support for 802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi standards, and that reliable performance is guaranteed in every corner of the home. Support for 802.11ad (WiGig) in the 60 GHz bands and 802.11ah (HaLow) in the sub-1GHz is not a requirement, though there is nothing to prevent these technologies from being incorporated. The first company to embrace the new Wi-Fi Home Design certification program is Lennar, in partnership with Ruckus and its Ruckus Unleashed Wi-Fi access points, typically known for enterprise deployments. Lennar’s home designs will also incorporate home automation and voice control through Amazon Alexa. 

New Homes to Be Smart Home Ready

COMMENTARY


More and more devices are being connected with Wi-Fi than ever before, ranging from tablets and smartphones, to media streaming adapters, networked speakers, games consoles, 4K smart televisions, smart appliances, and voice control front-ends such as Amazon Echo. ABI Research forecasts over 160 million Wi-Fi-enabled smart home products will be shipping annually by 2022. As more devices, increased traffic, and greater congestion all place more strain on Wi-Fi networks, there has been a desire to create a much more robust and consistent Wi-Fi performance throughout the home. This has given rise to Wi-Fi mesh solutions from a number of vendors including eero, Google Wifi, BT Whole Home Wi-Fi, Luma Surround WiFi, Linksys Velop, Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD, and most recently, Qualcomm’s Mesh Networking Platform. This move from the Wi-Fi Alliance is in many ways synergistic with these existing mesh developments in seeking to create a more reliable, scalable, and futureproof home Wi-Fi network.

The move also represents part of a broader shift toward improving the Wi-Fi experience. The upcoming 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard (High-Efficiency WLAN), set for final approval in 2019, is seeking to address the traffic and congestion challenges that Wi-Fi is currently facing and seeks to provide a fairer and more efficient provision of throughput among all client devices, greatly improving the user experience of the network as a whole. Incorporation of 60 GHz 802.11ad and eventually 802.11ay into access points could also ease some of the burden on the crowded 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, while HaLow could provide extended range Wi-Fi for outdoor devices and low-power sensor devices in and around the home. Over the next 5-10 years, this could result in Wi-Fi being able to provide a robust network for the most demanding and bandwidth-hungry devices, in addition to smart home devices, which may require longer range or battery operation.  

However, following on from Qualcomm’s recent mesh networking platform announcement, which incorporates Wi-Fi,Bluetooth, CSRmesh (Bluetooth), and 802.15.4 technologies, in addition to voice control, perhaps more exciting from a smart home perspective will be the potential for homebuilders to create new homes that are smart home ready from the get go, able to support Wi-Fi devices to their full capacity, in addition to being able to support and control ZigBee/Thread/Bluetooth devices via a voice control platform.

Ultimately, the move could provide homebuyers with a more reliable and futureproof networking performance than ever before, without having to get directly involved. Meanwhile, homebuilders can play a more important role in smart home design, installing Wi-Fi and potentially other connected devices such as thermostats, door locks, smart appliances, light bulbs, and security cameras before purchase.

However, while the move is far from unique, it does notably extend the potential of ongoing efforts. The potential in integrating smart home functionality in new builds has long been a key target for custom and installer network smart home suppliers. In 2004, Savant set out its own plan to target home builders, Lennar—the primary partner for the Wi-Fi Alliance launch—is adding Wi-Fi Alliance capabilities to its existingLennar Everything’s Included program, which partners with Nexia to deliver smart home capabilities in new builds. Lennar was also featured by Apple at last year’s WWDC as an Apple partner for Homekit also in new builds.

Residential construction companies, smart home service providers, smart home platform providers, device manufacturers, and more have seen potential in new builds all along. This announcement from the Wi-Fi Alliance will help to simplify the provision of a core wireless infrastructure in new build environments. This may help to scale wireless smart home devices and alleviate some of the networking challenges that this market has faced in recent years. 

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