Report Title: Wi-Fi & LoRaWAN
®
deployment synergies
Issue Date: September 2019
Version: 1.0. final version
5
LoRa Alliance & Wireless Broadband Alliance
Confidential & Proprietary Copyright © 2019
2 Wi-Fi technology
Wi-Fi is a family of radio technologies commonly used for wireless local area networking (WLAN) of
devices. It is based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards. Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Wi-Fi uses multiple parts of the IEEE 802 protocol family and is designed to seamlessly interwork with
the wired protocol Ethernet.
Devices that can use Wi-Fi technologies include desktop and laptop computers, smartphones and
tablets, smart TVs, printers, digital audio players, digital cameras, cars and drones, etc. Compatible
devices can connect to each other over Wi-Fi through a wireless Access Point as well as to connected
Ethernet devices and may use it to access the Internet. Such an Access Point (or Hotspot) has a range
of about 20 meters (66 feet) indoors and a greater range outdoors. Hotspot coverage can be as small
as a single room with walls that block radio waves, or as large as many square kilometers achieved by
using multiple overlapping access points.
The different versions of Wi-Fi are specified by various IEEE 802.11 protocol standards, with the
different radio technologies determining the ranges, radio bands, and speeds that may be achieved.
Wi-Fi most commonly uses the 2.4 GHz Ultra High Frequency (UHF) and the 5 GHz Super High
Frequency (SHF) SHF & Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) radio bands; these bands are
subdivided into multiple channels. Each channel can be time-shared by multiple networks. These
wavelengths work best for line-of-sight. Many common materials absorb or reflect them, which further
restricts range, but can tend to help minimize interference between different networks in crowded
environments. At close range, some versions of Wi-Fi, running on suitable hardware, can achieve
speeds of over 1 GBps (Gigabit per second).
IEEE 802.11 Frequency bands used
802.11a 5 GHz
802.11b 2.4 GHz
802.11g 2.4 GHz
802.11n 2.4 & 5 GHz
802.11ac Below 6 GHz
802.11ad Up to 60 GHz
802.11af TV white space (below 1 GHz)
802.11ah
700 MHz, 860MHz, 902MHz, etc.
ISM bands depend on country
802.11ax 1 to 7 GHz
Figure 3 - Wi-Fi Standards
