Let TOPCHIP ELECTRONICS talk today，A Brief History of WiFi.
In 1896, Italian Galileo Marconi achieved the first radio communication in human history. From then on, humanity opened the door to the wireless world.
Galileo Marconi (1874-1937)
After the birth of Wireless telegraphy, it has greatly improved people's communication efficiency and also broken the limit of communication distance.
A telegraph operator who is' listening 'to a telegram
With the development of Wireless telegraphy service, there is also radio broadcasting service. This is another important application of wireless technology.
The world's first radio station
As the number of broadcasts and radio stations on Earth continues to increase, wireless interference becomes increasingly severe.
In this situation, the government began to intervene and regulate wireless broadcasting, strictly limiting the use of radio frequencies.
This is the origin of the spectrum authorization system.
In the 1970s, cellular mobile communication began to rise, and it also did not escape the spectrum authorization system.
At that time, in the United States, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) was responsible for the management and authorization of spectrum.
FCC logo
After entering the 1980s, with the rapid development of technologies such as microcircuits and digital signal processing, wireless technology has made rapid progress, new wireless devices have been constantly invented, and new mobile communication standards have also emerged. However, due to the spectrum authorization system, the research and development of these new devices and technologies are severely restricted.
At this moment, a key figure appeared - he was Michael Marcus (later known as the "Wi Fi Godfather").
Marcus was just an ordinary engineer at the FCC at the time.
One day, he made a suggestion to his leader: he hoped to regulate some unauthorized spectrum, open it up for industry use, and appropriately increase the transmission power of these unauthorized spectrum devices, so that they can cover a range of tens to hundreds of meters. If done in this way, it will be beneficial to motivate technology companies to make more innovations and bring greater economic benefits.
The FCC adopted his suggestion and solicited opinions from all sectors of society. However, the feedback received was completely irresponsible:
As long as it doesn't occupy my frequency band, play whatever you want!
Yes, at that time, the frequency band resources had already been severely squeezed out, and no one wanted to release their own frequency bands.
Finally, the FCC can only release three unpopular "junk frequency bands" from the only available free frequency bands. These bands are the ISM radio band we often refer to now.
These frequency bands are mainly open for use in three fields: industry, science, and medicine, and belong to the Free License (free license), so they are also known as "unauthorized spectrum".
In terms of device transmission power, the FCC stipulates that the transmission power of these newly exempted frequency bands can reach 1W.
No one expected that this 1W has achieved various short range communication technologies such as Wi Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and so on today.
At that time, in order to avoid interference between devices, the FCC required the use of spread spectrum technology for these newly licensed frequency band products.
So-called spread spectrum technology,
The bandwidth used for transmitting information is much greater than the bandwidth of the information itself. Spread spectrum modulation is performed using spread spectrum encoding at the transmitting end, and information is received using relevant demodulation techniques at the receiving end. Spread spectrum technology was first applied in the military field, with high reliability, high confidentiality, and low susceptibility to interference.
After the introduction of the new FCC regulations, they have gained widespread popularity in the industry. But just as everyone was immersed in development, new problems emerged——
There is no unified standard within the entire industry.
At that time, many wireless product and device manufacturers developed their own specialized devices, and no one was fooled. Devices from different manufacturers were simply incompatible.
In 1988, NCR Company in the United States wanted to use unauthorized frequency bands to make wireless cash registers (NCR was the first company in the world to make mechanical and electric cash registers, which was later acquired by AT&T). So, we called Victor Hayes, an engineer from their R&D department, and asked him what to do with this matter?
Victor Hayes
Victor Hayes is very forward-looking and believes that there must be a unified standard first. Then Victor Hayes joined hands with Bruce Tuch, another engineer of Bell Labs, to find IEEE, hoping to establish a set of general unauthorized spectrum standards.
So in the early 1990s, IEEE established the famous 802.11 Working Group, chaired by Victor Hayes.
Meanwhile, in 1991, NCR's engineering team and its joint venture partner AT&T developed WaveLAN technology in Neuwegein, the Netherlands. This technology is considered the embryonic form of Wi Fi.
So, is NCR the inventor of Wi Fi? Not really.
Just as NCR was tinkering with WaveLAN, the Australian government's research institution CSIRO also invented a wireless network technology. The specific inventors are John O'Sullivan of the University of Sydney and his team.
Dr. John O'Sullivan
In 1996, they successfully applied for a technology patent in the United States with the patent number US Patent Number 5487069. Later, a lawsuit was filed for this patent
In 1999, when IEEE officially defined the 802.11 standard, it selected and recognized the wireless network technology invented by CSIRO as the best wireless network technology in the world, thus incorporating it as the core technology standard for Wi Fi.
Finally, the standard versions of IEEE 802.11, 802.11b (operating in the 2.4GHz frequency band) and 802.11a (operating in the 5.8GHz frequency band), were approved in December 1999 and January 2000, respectively.
While the working group was busy determining standards, Intersil, 3Com, Nokia, Aironet, Symbol, and Lucent six companies have jointly formed the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA).
The main purpose of WECA's establishment is to provide compatibility certification for products from different manufacturers and achieve interoperability between devices from different manufacturers.
After the establishment of the alliance, in order to facilitate market promotion, everyone discussed and planned to change a loud name, such as "WECA compatible", "IEEE802.11b compatible", etc. However, this stagnant terminology is difficult for people to blurt out.
For this matter, WECA also consulted brand experts specifically, who gave them many suggestions, such as calling them "FlankSpeed", "DragonFly", and so on.
Finally, the name "Wi Fi" won.
The reason why it is called "Wi Fi" is because it sounds a bit like "HiFi", which easily reminds people that CD players from different manufacturers can be compatible with any amplifier device. Later, some people said that "Wi Fi" is the abbreviation of "wireless fidelity", which is actually just what people later imagined.
In October 2002, WECA was officially renamed Wi-Fi Alliance.
The technology has been standardized and the stage name has been established. What should we do now?
Hold your thighs.
No matter how good your technology is, someone should be willing to use it, and there should be equipment manufacturers who can support it.
So Lucent, a member of the Wi-Fi Alliance, found Apple and hoped that their products could introduce Wi Fi.
Apple is very proud, they told Lucent: If your wireless adapter price can be reduced to less than $100, we will design a Wi Fi slot in the laptop.
Lucent agreed.
In July 1999, Apple introduced Wi Fi for the first time in its new generation of iBook laptops, but it was not standard, it was just an option.
Steve Jobs demonstrated the "wireless" magic of iBook G3 and named it "AirPort"
However, this' optional 'quickly attracted the attention of other computer manufacturers.
Not only have hardware manufacturers followed up on Wi Fi, but Microsoft's Wi
1n, 802.11ac, 802.11ax, etc.
The development trajectory of 802.11
It is precisely because naming methods such as 802.11a/b/n/g/ac/ax are easily confusing and cannot easily determine the order, that IEEE has decided to start with 802.11ax and name them numerically.
And 802.11ax is our current mainstream Wi Fi 6.
After more than 20 years of development, the transmission speed of Wi Fi 6 has been 873 times that of the first generation WiFi.
Now, Wi Fi has entered a new stage. The highly anticipated Wi Fi 7 is about to enter our lives. Its speed will reach an astonishing 40Gbps or above.
It has to be said that Wi Fi is a very successful wireless communication technology, which has greatly changed our lives.
How long will Wi Fi technology accompany us in a fully digital and intelligent human society? Will it have more innovation?
Let's wait and see!