Sydney-based fabless semiconductor startup Morse Micro is using its HaLow (802.11ah) chip to show how outdoor Wi-Fi signals can operate at many times the range of traditional Wi-Fi technology. I succeeded in proving it. In this test, the wireless network reached up to 3 km from the source.
Most people reading this article have likely never heard of long-hauling. 802.11ah It used to be the WiFi standard because it was approved in 2016 (here) and never really caught on.
One reason for this is that very few companies have developed this standard, and the standard 900MHz Radio spectrum bands are already largely allocated to mobile networks and other uses in the UK and other countries. Additionally, while this technology was always intended to provide connectivity to small Internet of Things (IoT) devices rather than in the home, there are other standards that can accomplish that.
Nevertheless, Morse Micro still believes in the potential of HaLow to provide a low-power, long-range means of connecting IoT devices, and this has been proven through trials of its new chip. The demo included a live two-way video call over Wi-Fi HaLow Link. ocean beach san francisco The neighborhood was supplied by the company’s electricity MM6108 System-on-a-chip — provides radio, PHY, and MAC in one unit and can optionally include a 32-bit application processor built around the free, open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture.
In this test, we were able to transmit a WiFi signal from a single access point to a record distance of 1.8 miles (3 km), at which point speeds dropped to 1 Mbps. But it was still good enough to maintain high quality video calls using modern codecs.
Performance at 250 meters improved significantly, reaching 17Mbps. The link then gradually dropped to 11 Mbps at 500 meters, maintained almost that speed at 1,000 meters, but dropped again to 8 Mbps at 1,500 meters and 7.5 Mbps at 2,000 meters. The company says its chips can achieve speeds of up to 32.5Mbps, but it’s clear that they’ll need to be pretty close to the AP for that (the standard says he’s set to run at speeds between 150Kbps and 86.7Mbps). ).
“Here we achieved a distance of 3km with Wi-Fi” Will Abraham of Morse Micro reported during the demonstration. “This is unheard of in real-world noisy environments. Thanks to Wi-Fi HaLow and 8MHz bandwidth, it can support enough data rates to make high-quality video calls even at this incredible distance.”
Unfortunately, we don’t have much information about what part of the 900MHz band was used in this test. Similarly, download and upload performance are not differentiated, making it difficult to know what speeds are actually being reported.
There also remains a question mark over how widely this will be adopted, given regulatory and existing frequency allocation issues between countries. The system is also encouraged to operate in license-exempt bands, although outdoor WiFi networks in the UK typically have to follow stricter rules.
