Interesting development..

Let us see when it can become mainstream... it will be really interesting to see how it goes and to what extent it goes.. there is potential for this technology to become robotics or self driven cars ultimately..


Wi-Fi network will let cars talk to each other

By Tom Krisher

Associated Press

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In a few weeks, about 2,800 cars, trucks and buses will start talking to each other on the streets of Ann Arbor, Mich., in a giant experiment that government officials are hoping will lead to safer roads.

Wireless devices will allow the vehicles to send signals back and forth, warning their drivers of potential dangers such as stopped traffic or cars that might be blowing through a red light. They can even get traffic lights to turn green if no cars are coming the other way.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and the University of Michigan are hoping the yearlong, $25 million project generates data that show the devices can cut down on traffic crashes. Officials say eventually this could lead to the devices going in every car. About 500 vehicles with the devices are now on the roads. That will rise to 2,800 in about six weeks, officials said Tuesday.

“This is a big day for safety,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said at an event at the university formally kicking off the experiment. “We’ll use this information to decide if vehicle technology can be applied to daily lives.”

More than 32,000 people died last year in U.S. traffic crashes, down 1.7 percent from 2010. The number of crashes has fallen in recent years as automakers added safety devices such as air bags, anti-lock brakes and stability control, which helps drivers keep cars under control in emergency situations.

But LaHood said Tuesday that 80 percent of crashes in which the drivers aren’t impaired by drugs or alcohol could be prevented — or the severity reduced — if cars could talk to each other.

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder helps launch the Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot with the Transportation Department in Ann Arbor, Mich.

MELANIE MAXWELL/ ASSOCIATED PRESS 

We need Gigabit Ethernet in everyone's home

Just like telephone lines, water pipes, roads, electric cables.. We now need Gigi ethernet at everyone's home.. I think time has come for all the governments to mandate it.. start with at least new houses or developments.. Once everyone sees advantages of it and usage explodes.. it will usher us into new era of growth and all together different era when we will mock about current DSL/Cable connection the way we are mock dial-up connection or even worse, the good old Plain old Telephone (POT).. 


all these advancements in wireless have very limited application unless, pipes coming to home gets fatter and with their current diet restrictions, they need to be substantially fatter.. 


Though, 11ac will have its own application.. especially for in-home media center to multiple display device video on full HD or even super HD (with Apple's Retina display push..). It will definitely eliminate any need of any wiring in the houses which will be good relief.. 


Keep up the good work!!!


Cheers!!!

New Wi-Fi standard speeds up streaming

Protocol will provide faster coverage throughout home

By John Boudreau

jboudreau@mercurynews.com 

It wasn’t long ago families squabbled over who was hogging the TV remote control. Now they face off over who’s hogging the bandwidth.

As the number of wireless devices increases in homes — multiple TVs, smartphones, tablets, laptops — networks are getting bogged down.

But help is on the way.

A new Wi-Fi protocol — dubbed 802.11ac — will increase data speeds by as much as three times over the most recent standard to 1.3 gigabytes per second. It is also six times more power efficient and will provide faster and more reliable Wi-Fi coverage throughout the home.

Broadcom is the first wireless chip manufacturer to come out with what it is calling 5G Wi-Fi. While the new standard won’t increase the speed of data coming in through the so-called Internet pipes to the home — such as DSL or fiber-optic cables — it will enable people to view and stream video already stored on, say, PCs or DVRs, much more quickly.

“If you are paying for 50 megabytes per second from AT&T, having a 5G Wi-Fi router in your home doesn’t change that,” said Dino Bekis, Broadcom’s senior director for access and wireless entertainment. “What it does do is allow you to share content between devices — smartphones, smart TVs, etc. — much faster and more reliably than before.”

The new standard underscores the surging demand for bandwidth to handle the large amounts of video Americans are consuming every day. “Video use has been growing exponentially,” he said.

According to research by Cisco Systems, 1 million minutes of video content will race across networks every second by 2015, and the number of gadgets connected to the Internet will be twice the world’s population. Between 2010 and 2015, mobile data traffic is expected to soar 26 times.

“The need to stream multiple videos simultaneously (in homes) is there,” said Philip Solis, analyst with ABI Research. “There is a need for 802.11ac.” 

A number of manufacturers, including San Jose-based Netgear, are now rolling out routers embedded with Broadcom’s 5G Wi-Fi chips. And makers of devices, from smartphones to laptops and smart TVs, will start embedding the new chips in coming months. Taiwan computer maker Asus recently launched the first laptop equipped with the new Wi-Fi protocol. 

The new technology could add to the momentum of Americans turning away from cable TV for their entertainment, said David Henry, Netgear vice president of product management. “If folks are going to cut the cord, they need to be able to stream multiple videos at the same time,” he said. 

The new Wi-Fi standard, which operates on the wider 5 GHz radio spectrum provides more room to transfer data with less traffic, Bekis explained. “Think about it as a brand new freeway opening up with no cars,” he said. 

It’s a faster and more efficient way to move information, Bekis added. So it would be like packing a bus that can move down the highway at the speed of a Ferrari. 

In the home, that would mean the kids can watch a video in the family room, Dad can stream a movie from the DVR to his bedroom TV, and a visiting cousin could transfer a vacation video from a tablet to another TV — all simultaneously, he explained. 

Because the protocol is able to transfer data more quickly, and more efficiently, it uses significantly less power, Bekis said. “For a given amount of data, you can transmit it at one-sixth the power,” he said. 

The new protocol will make Wi-Fi signals faster and more reliable throughout the home, which usually get weaker the further one is from the router, said Netgear’s Henry. 

Routers sold with the new 5G Wi-Fi chip are expected to be compatible with devices that don’t have the new technology and operate on the more congested 2.4 GHz radio spectrum. 

“When you put this in your home, you won’t notice anything different,” Bekis said. But “as soon as you have a device that is embedded with 5G Wi-Fi, you are immediately going to be able to transmit data at these higher rates.” 

Contact John Boudreau at 408-278-3496; follow him at Twitter.com/svwriter