GigaOM » wi-fi direct

Walking with a smartphone could actually keep you safe from cars

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 20:55:58 +0000

While only an estimated 16 percent of the 7 billion people on the planet carry a smartphone today, it’s looking inevitable that most, if not all, of the world’s population will have one at some point. In that case, if you know where a smartphone is, you have a good idea where the smartphone’s owner is. General Motors is counting on that by testing a wireless pedestrian detection system, in hopes of giving drivers more time to avoid potentially hitting a person.

Although both cars and smartphones are filled with sensors, the solution GM is testing doesn’t need any of them. Instead, GM is banking on wireless connectivity; specifically the Wi-Fi Direct standard. Conceptually, cars would be actively looking for Wi-Fi Direct smartphones — and the owners of those devices — and could signal an imminent collision in advance by comparing the two signals up to 656 feet apart.

The concept is similar to Ford’s own vehicle detection system that uses a different Wi-Fi standard, 802.11p, to help cars detect each other. These Wi-Fi implementations work without access points on a peer-to-peer basis, so they can be used anywhere. Pedestrians will of course need to keep their Wi-Fi radio active on their smartphones for GM’s solution to work but I don’t think that will be an issue.

Wi-Fi generally uses less battery life than mobile broadband radios, for one thing. And we’re clearly moving towards heterogeneous networks — or hetnets — with seamless Wi-Fi offload from traditional cellular networks.

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Video: Wi-Fi Direct, an Easier Way to Connect Wireless Devices

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:45:25 +0000

Getting devices connected to share files or engage in multi-person apps looks like it’s going to get much easier based on Wi-Fi Direct, a new initiative from the Wi-Fi Alliance. The technology uses existing Wi-Fi radios for a direct, peer-to-peer connection between two or more Wi-Fi devices. No external router or access point is needed to get connected, and even older Wi-Fi devices can connect to Wi-Fi Direct certified gadgets. There are no messy configuration steps involved either; certified Wi-Fi direct devices can securely and seamlessly connect to each other whenever in range of each other.

Essentially, Wi-Fi Direct sounds like a simplified version of Bluetooth, but based on what I’ve seen, it’s even easier to use. It leverages the speeds and ranges of traditional Wi-Fi solutions; a laptop could shoot photos to a large screen television from hundreds of feet away, for example. Or, a Wi-Fi Blu-ray player in one room could pipe content to another room. That flexibility, combined with the simplicity and growth in devices shipping with Wi-Fi radios, makes this a technology worth watching. The number of consumer electronics and handsets with Wi-Fi radios is expected to grow by 26 percent a year through 2015, according to ABI Research.

Here at the Consumer Electronics Show, I got to see Wi-Fi Direct in action and snapped a short video of some demonstration applications. Using a platform called Qwarq, I saw Wi-Fi Direct apps such as chat and gaming between two devices to show off the peer-to-peer connectivity. The gaming app in particular demonstrated practically no latency and neither application required any configuration steps to connect the devices.

Bear in mind that these are just sample implementations; direct connection of two Wi-Fi Direct gadgets opens up a world of potential as a growing number of consumers want to move data and media to televisions, printers and laptops as easily as possible. In fact, with all the dual-core smartphones popping up with support for 1080p content playback, HDMI cables could be replaced through Wi-Fi Direct to get content on larger screens. The LG Optimus Black, for example, already has Wi-Fi Direct certification and support, so it could be a portable set-top box that doesn’t need a physical cable for television connections.

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Samsung Has First Wi-Fi Direct Smartphone

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:27:31 +0000

Samsung’s Galaxy S is the first smartphone certified to use Wi-Fi Direct, a new standard that supports peer-to-peer wireless transfers without an access point or hotspot. Zatz Not Funny noticed the Wi-Fi Alliance certification today for the GT-I9000, which is the generic version of the Galaxy S, an Android handset available in many countries worldwide and also on all four major carriers in the U.S. (Related: our review of AT&T’s version, the Captivate) Samsung has sold over 5 million Galaxy S smartphones since introducing it this summer.

Wi-Fi Direct uses a device-to-device approach, is secured by WPA2 security and should make it easier for consumers to transfer data between objects that contain a supported Wi-Fi radio. With a Samsung Galaxy S, for example, a user could wirelessly transfer photos from the handset to a computer, even if there isn’t a wireless network to connect the two. Or the same photos could easily be beamed to a wireless picture frame that supports the Wi-Fi Direct standard. Users could theoretically print those images by shooting them from the Galaxy S to a wireless printer as well.

If Wi-Fi Direct sounds like Bluetooth, it certainly is similar. But the range for Bluetooth use on the Samsung Galaxy S handset tops out around 30 feet. The smartphone’s Wi-Fi radio, however, uses the 802.11n standard, which should allow for several orders of magnitude more range than Bluetooth, for example. The more smartphones that gain Wi-Fi Direct certification through native support or firmware upgrades, the less consumers will need a Wi-Fi hotspot or a USB cable to transfer or backup data and media between devices. I expect we’ll see apps and games that take advantage of direct wireless connections (with no network required) as the technology gains adoption.

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Wi-Fi Direct Promises Device-to-Device Connectivity

Ryan Kim — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:12:39 +0000

Wi-Fi Direct, the standard for device-to-device Wi-Fi connections without a traditional network, is finally getting out of the gates officially with the Wi-Fi Alliance certifying the first generation of products today.

The initial devices, mostly laptop mini-cards, are now available and testing is open to new gadgets. With certification reviews taking just a couple of days, we could see a number of new Wi-Fi Direct gadgets available for the holidays, provided manufacturers are prepared to include the standard.

Wi-Fi Direct builds off the old adhoc wireless mode many devices were capable of, but includes more security (WPA2) and makes it easier for users to connect two Wi-Fi enabled devices without having a local network. Existing Wi-Fi devices can be upgraded to Wi-Fi Direct with a firmware upgrade, while many new devices will likely have the standard built right in.

You only need one Wi-Fi Direct device to make a connection, which can act like an access point for one or more Wi-Fi enabled machines. This is going to make it easy for two people to share files between laptops, send print jobs from a camera to a printer or push a video from a handset to another Wi-Fi enabled device. It could also be used for home entertainment networking or multi-player gaming. As Stacey pointed out last year, she could back up her computer on her Wi-Fi Direct-enabled hard drive without ever having to jump on a network. And we could also see more peripherals that connect over Wi-Fi instead of traditional Bluetooth.

This again shows the resilience and flexibility of Wi-Fi, which is being deployed for everything from wider area coverage and cellular network offloading to building personal area networks. As we wrote about earlier, 70 percent of Millennials say they spend four hours a day on Wi-Fi, and believe that this is vital for maintaining relationships.

We’re already seeing companies try to tackle some of the things Wi-Fi Direct addresses. Apple and HP have announced a method for printing on networked printers from iOS and other devices. Apple has also unveiled AirPlay, which allows iOS users to move music from an iOS device to speakers and stereo systems and soon beam video to an Apple TV. Intel also released Wireless Display, a way to push your PC content to a TV. But in many cases, the connections are still through an existing wireless network or require an extra piece of hardware such as Intel’s Wireless Display adapter.

With Wi-Fi Direct, we should see more direct solutions that take advantage of the increasing number of embedded Wi-Fi chips. The Wi-Fi Alliance said 82 million Wi-Fi-enabled portable consumer electronics devices and 216 million Wi-Fi handsets will ship this year with 26 percent annual growth projected through 2014.

It remains to be seen how manufacturers implement Wi-Fi Direct. The standard could be limited by manufacturers and wireless carriers, who may be wary of allowing the feature to flourish unfettered. Carriers, for example, could prevent a phone from acting like a Wi-Fi hotspot, something they already do with some Android devices. Let’s hope the major players let Wi-Fi Direct reach its full potential.

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