WiFi Gets Moar Power

Tinfoil Hats Beware

A lot of people have mixed feelings about current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr but the recent decision “to create a new category of unlicensed devices… that can operate outdoors and at higher power than previously authorized devices.”  These ‘Geofenced variable power’ devices will operate in the 6 GHz band and provide up to 11 dBm/MHz power spectral density and 24 dBm effective isotropic radiated power.  This is a bump up from the current 5 dBm/MHz limit for VLP devices in the USA.

This would enable VLP WiFi to provide enough signal strength to handle AR/VR devices and decent local hotspots.  You can certainly manage this with existing standard power access points, this new classification is aimed at battery powered WiFi devices like your smartphone, the network in your car or even some industrial functions.  The new GVP devices will certainly be harder on their batteries but unlike current VLP WiFi devices they will offer reasonable performance bot indoors and outside.

The geofenced part of the new standard indicates that the devices will have to detect and cease operating in exclusion zones.  These devices will also be limited to certain frequencies to ensure they don’t interfere with existing WiFi devices that have always been licensed to operate with higher powered signals.