Products supporting the HaLow standard are beginning to see commercial deployment, paving the way for new internet of things (IoT) use cases.

According to the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), HaLow will offer greater throughput, greater range, greater security, improved material penetration, longer battery life, enhanced device density, minimized end-to-end delay, and easier installation and management.

HaLow

HaLow, also referred to as 802.11ah, is built on a Wi-Fi foundation and therefore offers up to date security and native IP support, WBA notes. The technology is designed to uses sub-1 GHz spectrum and narrow channel bandwidths. WBA plans to test some of the envisioned new IoT use cases for HaLow. The use cases will measure coverage areas, data rates, throughput and signal reliability. The use case and application testing will include:

· Smart home: Comparison to traditional Wi-Fi in security cameras, HVAC, appliances, detached garage connections, solar power systems, power backup generators and EV chargers.

· Smart city: Infrastructure monitoring, smart utilities, and traffic management to highlight wider coverage benefits, high data throughput, increased device density and low-cost maintenance.

· Smart building automation: Physical security, surveillance, access control, safety alarms and water sensors.

· Smart retail: Scanners, readers, point-of-sale equipment, asset tracking, security monitoring, warehouse robots and handlers.

· Industrial IoT: Asset tracking, infrastructure monitoring, remote equipment control, safety automation, and security monitoring.

· Agriculture: Smart agriculture or precision farming systems, including environmental monitoring, soil monitoring, plant health monitoring, actuator control and data collection for predictive breeding.

“The move to demonstrating Wi-Fi HaLow in real-world scenarios is an important milestone for the WBA and the contributing industry members supporting these activities,” WBA CEO Tiago Rodrigues said in a prepared statement.

“Each scenario will highlight how Wi-Fi HaLow solves connectivity problems, which previously may have required non-standard RF radio technology, or incurred higher costs of ownership. A detailed analysis from these deployments will inform new deployment guides, helping wider industry to successfully roll-out IoT solutions, without having to resort to proprietary or non-IP technologies to gain the automation, insights and business benefits that IoT promises to deliver.