Wi-Fi Alliance® and Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University have been working together to promote the value of 6 GHz Wi-Fi®. In July, Ramathibodi Hospital and Wi-Fi Alliance, along with Wi-Fi Alliance member partners Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, and Meta, successfully demonstrated how 6 GHz Wi-Fi will revolutionize the future of healthcare. The live demo showcased how utilization of the full 1200 MHz Wi-Fi in 6 GHz delivers the heightened throughputs and stringent latency needed for advanced augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications that support medical education and training, efficiently serving dense environments such as classrooms and training seminars with hundreds of students and doctors.  

Technologies used in this demonstration: 

• Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6® Routers with 6E capabilities: Aruba Multiservice Mobility Controller/AP-635 and 655 Access Points (AP)
• Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7™ client devices: Intel® Wi-Fi 7 BE200
• Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 client devices: Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 (Gig+)
• Meta Quest Pro Head Mounted Displays (HMD)
• Ramathibodi Hospital’s Anatomy Viz app 

Demonstrated scenarios and outcomes: 

The demonstration illustrated the difference in AR/VR performance and capacity levels when operating in the lower 500 MHz of 6 GHz compared to the full 1200 MHz available within the entire 6 GHz band. The demo showcased two sophisticated healthcare use cases that will support 200 medical students, doctors, and hospital faculty in Ramathibodi Hospital's classroom sessions: 

1. AR/VR technologies in medical training: AR/VR technologies like immersive virtual anatomy visualization allow for in-depth analysis of human anatomy, providing doctors and medical students with an immersive 3-D view of the human body including skeletal, muscular, neural, and soft tissue structures.
2. Dense deployment streaming and file transfer: Next generation Wi-Fi allows every person in a 500-seat classroom to independently stream high definition video, transfer files, or utilize 5 GHz and 6 GHz multi-layer network segmentation and deployment, giving all students the opportunity to learn and collaborate uninterrupted, at the same time. 

Scenario 1:  Wi-Fi operation in the lower 500 MHz spectrum of 6 GHz  

To simulate the current situation in Thailand, where only the lower 500 MHz of the 6 GHz band is available for unlicensed devices, the demonstration began with a baseline of Wi-Fi APs operating in only the lower 500 MHz band (network configuration: Wi-Fi 6E, a single 160 MHz channel in the 6 GHz band, co-channel Wi-Fi APs) with a single 160 MHz channel and minimal client devices (fewer than 10, including the Intel® Wi-Fi 7 BE200, the Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 (Gig+), and Meta Quest Pro VR HMD). These devices used the network for ultra high definition video streaming, wireless casting of Ramathibodi Hospital’s Anatomy Viz app via a VR headset, and file transfers.  

While the network performance and user experience were satisfactory with a small number of clients, it quickly deteriorated as more devices (up to 40 devices, including the Intel® Wi-Fi 7 BE200, the Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 (Gig+), and Meta Quest Pro VR HMD) connected to the network using the above-mentioned applications. With only the lower 500 MHz of the 6 GHz band available, typical enterprise deployments like the Chakri Naruebodindra Medical Institute (CNMI) at Ramathibodi Hospital face inevitable channel repetition. This limited spectrum leads to co-channel and adjacent channel interference, significantly reducing network throughput and increasing latency by over 500%, with delays exceeding 200 milliseconds. This degradation resulted in frequent video buffering, glitches during streaming, and VR casting interruptions causing major lag that disrupted the immersive experience, making the interaction feel unresponsive and causing motion sickness for users during live seminars.  

Scenario 2: Wi-Fi operation in the entire 1200 MHz spectrum in 6 GHz 

The second scenario demonstrated the advantages of using the full 1200 MHz of the 6 GHz band. With the entire spectrum available, Wi-Fi APs could operate on 160 MHz channels spaced further apart spectrally, ensuring much-needed channel diversity (i.e., greater number of channels). The number of client devices and network load were identical to Scenario 1, and the configuration was tested by running the Anatomy Viz app on a VR headset and casting to a screen, along with streaming 8K videos, displaying hospital course material, and transferring files. In the absence of the adverse effects of co-channel interference (CCI) and adjacent-channel interference (ACI), data rate and latency measurements utilizing the entire 1200 MHz spectrum yielded very high data rates and significantly lower latency in the range of 20-30 milliseconds, delivering a smooth, glitch-free VR experience, as well as seamless ultra high definition video streaming, and high-speed file transfers without delays. 

Degradation of performance with reduced spectrum availability 

The demonstration confirmed the findings of previous theoretical studies, which emphasized that seven channels are necessary to achieve optimal performance in dense environments. As the demonstration illustrated, the use of 160 MHz channels is necessary to consistently deliver gigabit connectivity, as the Wi-Fi data throughout over 80 MHz channels only achieves gigabit data rates under specific propagation characteristics (i.e., very good RF propagation and/or very high number of parallel spatial streams). Using seven 160 MHz channels reduces interference between APs and ensures strong performance as user numbers grow, making them essential to dense environments such as universities, hospitals, and corporate offices. 

Access to the full 6 GHz band is crucial 

The demonstration underscored the importance of making the full 6 GHz spectrum available for Wi-Fi to deliver the stringent latency requirements and data throughputs needed for an optimal AR/VR user experience. “Wi-Fi Alliance is proud to showcase the immense potential of 6 GHz Wi-Fi to revolutionize healthcare,” said Kevin Robinson, President and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance. “Today’s Wi-Fi technology offers unprecedented performance and reliability, and these demonstrations are just a glimpse of its potential to improve patient care and operational efficiency in healthcare settings.” 

6 GHz Wi-Fi empowers future innovations 

Wi-Fi in 6 GHz unlocks the full potential of advanced technologies, ensuring healthcare facilities are prepared to support future innovations and maintain the latest security practices to protect critical patient data​. Making the full 6 GHz frequency band available for Wi-Fi not only supports emerging healthcare applications, but also provides the foundation for future advancements across market segments, including automotive, enterprise, home, IIoT, and more. The successful demonstration of 6 GHz Wi-Fi at Ramathibodi Hospital illustrates how cutting-edge Wi-Fi applications can strengthen medical training practices and serves as a model for nationwide adoption of the band in Thailand and around the world.

In today’s episode, we welcome Matt Pekarske, Principal of Connectivity and Service Integration Technologies at GE HealthCare, to the show to explore 6 GHz Wi-Fi's impact on healthcare. Matt tells us how the additional spectrum of 6 GHz Wi-Fi enhances healthcare settings by improving clinical workflows and ensuring reliable connectivity for critical healthcare devices. He also shares his insights into the rapidly growing Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) and explains how patient-centric devices stream real-time data to enable secure patient monitoring. We also cover how Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 support legacy equipment and comply with HIPAA regulations through strong encryption and authentication mechanisms. Tune in to learn more about how 6 GHz Wi-Fi is revolutionizing patient care and transforming healthcare technology.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7™: https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-certified-7 
Wi-Fi 7 market momentum: 6 GHz Wi-Fi empowers connectivity in crucial healthcare scenarios: https://www.wi-fi.org/beacon/matt-pekarske/wi-fi-7-market-momentum-6-ghz-wi-fi-empowers-connectivity-in-crucial 
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6®: https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-certified-6 
For Wi-Fi Alliance: https://www.wi-fi.org 
For Membership Info: https://www.wi-fi.org/membership 
General Contact: https://www.wi-fi.org/contact-us

Wi-Fi Alliance® recently hosted a panel on Wi-Fi®’s unforeseen influence at the Americas Member Meeting in Austin. The panel explored the profound impact of Wi-Fi across industries, from advancing patient care and enhancing events to supporting NASA in space exploration and discovery. Read on for key insights from our panelists:

Wi-Fi enables advancements in healthcare

Ali Youssef, Director of Medical Device and Emerging Security Tech at Henry Ford Health, shared his perspective on how Wi-Fi supports healthcare facilities, from providing basic connectivity set-ups to empowering the robust networks that support mission-critical applications. Wi-Fi has assumed an indispensable role in modern healthcare, enhancing patient outcomes by supporting high-bandwidth lab simulations, enabling near-instantaneous transfers of medical files for real-time diagnoses, and connecting medical devices and sensors in a complex Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. Wi-Fi’s backward compatibility also allows for the integration of legacy medical devices into modern Wi-Fi networks while protecting patient data in a fast-paced environment. “We rely on Wi-Fi to make your care experience, to customize it to your particular needs,” Youssef said.

Wi-Fi delivers the next generation of event experiences

Doug Peterson, Partner at Prestige Global Meeting Source, discussed the crucial role of Wi-Fi in the events and hospitality industry. Wi-Fi has become an essential utility that guests demand, and they expect peak performance whether they’re connecting from a remote luxury vacation in the Maldives or a massive convention in Las Vegas. The need for superior connectivity in high-density environments has brought new challenges to venues, including hotels, airports, and stadiums, and advancements like Wi-Fi 6 have delivered heightened speeds and greater reliability to support increasing bandwidth requirements and multi-device streaming. Wi-Fi has revolutionized the events industry, providing opportunities for brands to foster new levels of interactivity and community-building that connect attendees before, during, and after the event. “At the starting point, wireless technology has really expanded the idea of human connection,” Peterson said, “and it's made events more powerful and in a very profound way.”

Wi-Fi forges connections between Earth and space

The panel also featured Chatwin Lansdowne, an Engineer at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Chatwin serves as subsystem manager for the IEEE 802.11-based External Wireless Communications system on the International Space Station (ISS) and supports standards development for lunar exploration. Lansdowne discussed his role in spearheading the introduction of wireless networks in space, including integrating Wi-Fi into space missions like the Artemis program and working to establish Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® as a standard for space missions through collaboration with multiple space agencies.

Lansdowne described the diverse applications of Wi-Fi in an environment that is literally out of this world, including facilitating communication between astronauts and mission control, accessing and monitoring vehicle systems, and supporting wireless cameras on spacecraft. Despite some initial skepticism regarding Wi-Fi’s suitability for networking in space and the need for rigorous testing in a harsh environment, Wi-Fi’s adaptability and cost-efficiency have made it a key ingredient across multiple missions, allowing for greater agility in terms of execution and budget. “We can think of a new thing now, and it doesn't take a lot of time to implement it,” Lansdowne explained. NASA currently requires Wi-Fi 6 for the Artemis program and is exploring future uses of Wi-Fi 7. 

Wi-Fi lays the foundation for the future 

Wi-Fi is more than a connectivity method – it is a catalyst for innovation and human connection across industries and environments. Today’s advancements will pave the way for future technology as Wi-Fi’s decentralized nature and use of unlicensed spectrum allow it to support the next generation of complex use cases. “Over the past 25 years, Wi-Fi has created a sense of freedom, which lets people be free to do their thing – whatever their thing might be,” said moderator Claus Hetting of Wi-Fi NOW. “Amazing things happen.” 

Stay tuned to our blog and podcast to learn more about Wi-Fi’s unique impact across industries as we celebrate 25 years of connectivity.

Left to right: Moderator Claus Hetting, Chatwin Lansdowne, Ali Youssef, Doug Peterson

Wi-Fi 7 brings advanced Wi-Fi® performance to the next era of connected devices. In this new blog series, we’ll explore how Wi-Fi 7 enables innovation across various market segments. 

Wi-Fi® in 6 GHz is transforming healthcare in ways that will help reduce the current burden on clinical staff. Healthcare systems are experiencing staff shortages and looking for ways to improve efficiency while still providing best-in-class patient care. 6 GHz Wi-Fi, which includes Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7, provides increased bandwidth, capacity, and improved network efficiency to support a new era of healthcare by facilitating seamless transmission of large medical data files, enabling real-time patient monitoring and diagnostics, and delivering crucial telemedicine to users in remote locations. With the technology advancements available today, Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 enabled medical devices used by clinical staff will help enhance patient care outcomes and operational efficiency in healthcare environments. 

Key features and benefits of 6 GHz Wi-Fi in healthcare  

Wi-Fi 6E and its use of 6 GHz spectrum offers significant performance improvements, and this is especially true of Wi-Fi enabled medical devices. More channels are available thanks to the additional spectrum capacity of contiguous blocks in 6 GHz, meaning wireless networks operating in the band benefit from reduced congestion, which is vital for applications that demand high data throughputs. Furthermore, healthcare facilities with access to 6 GHz spectrum will have the option to segment channels by device type, allocating separate channels for medical devices, smartphones with patient alerts, and guest traffic as well, resulting in reduced congestion on any given channel and higher performance for the devices operating within it. 

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) is a key feature of Wi-Fi 6 that enhances the efficiency and performance of wireless communication by dividing the available frequency spectrum into smaller subcarriers and allocating them to multiple users simultaneously. The available spectrum is further divided into resource units (RUs), each consisting of one or more subcarriers. RUs can be dynamically allocated to different users based on their traffic requirements, channel conditions, and quality of service (QoS) needs. The access points (APs) can then dynamically allocate RUs to users based on their traffic demands and channel conditions, significantly improving the efficiency, capacity, and performance of wireless networks – especially necessary for the complex demands of a health system. 

Wi-Fi 7 also benefits from 6 GHz spectrum, and one of its new features will significantly impact the healthcare sector. Multi-link Operation (MLO) allows medical devices to establish and maintain multiple concurrent links with the same or different APs or devices. When a medical device utilizes MLO, it can redundantly send critical patient data on multiple channels separated by frequency band (i.e., one in the 2.4 GHz channel and one in the 6 GHz channel). This allows the receiving device two opportunities to successfully receive data sent over Wi-Fi, resulting in a more reliable connectivity experience for medical devices if one AP becomes impaired (e.g., heavily loaded with clients) or during the roaming process.  

Challenges and considerations of 6 GHz Wi-Fi in medical settings 

With the introduction of Wi-Fi in 6 GHz, health systems will have to contend with a new set of challenges. Although there have been marked improvements made over the past year, 6 GHz spectrum is not yet globally harmonized for Wi-Fi use. Each region deploying 6 GHz APs will need to make sure the devices connecting to the health system’s Wi-Fi network infrastructure support the full channel set for that region. If a device operates on a 6 GHz Wi-Fi channel list that is a subset of what the healthcare Wi-Fi infrastructure supports, the device may have difficulty connecting in some areas.  

Also, health systems must comply with HIPAA and other cybersecurity standards to protect patient data. Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E introduced mandatory support for highly secure WPA3, so healthcare IT departments will need to carefully deploy Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E capable networks if support for legacy medical devices still utilizing lower security methods (e.g., WPA2) is clinically necessary within a health system. 

6 GHz lays the foundation for the future of patient care 

Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 technology advancements are here today. Increasing bandwidth, capacity, and efficiency will drive reliability improvements critical to healthcare applications, including patient monitors streaming low bandwidth, low latency physiologic patient data in a remote location, and imaging devices sending high resolution images for on-the-spot diagnoses. These improvements will result in increased confidence in Wi-Fi enabled medical devices with clinical staff (i.e., Wi-Fi just works) and improved clinical workflow efficiency through greater access to physiological data. In today’s environment where clinical staff are understaffed and overworked, these Wi-Fi enhancements couldn’t come at a better time. The future is bright for Wi-Fi in the healthcare setting. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to objects that connect to the Internet and each other beyond the traditional computing and entertainment products that use Wi-Fi®, such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and game consoles and controllers. These IoT devices use connectivity to carry out their core functionality and are often programmed and operated by a control device such as a smartphone or voice control platform. Home IoT devices are a broad category of solutions that are used in (and near) consumer residential settings — including security and lighting systems, appliances, and home automation components.

Wi-Fi Alliance® certification programs, including Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7™, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6®, and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED HaLow™ enable home applications and services with varying requirements including smart locks, thermometers, home control, and video. An increasing number of products to support home security and monitoring services are entering the market and require high bandwidth and low latency to ensure real-time viewership and minimize false alarms. New use cases that rely on robust connections throughout the home and to the cloud are quickly becoming mainstays, and Wi-Fi is well-positioned to support them. 

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WPA3™ is a mandatory certification for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® devices that helps prevent the havoc of security breaches by providing protocols to secure Wi-Fi networks and simplifying Wi-Fi security while providing more robust authentication. As families become increasingly reliant on connected IoT devices like security monitoring and healthcare devices, it is imperative to leverage the latest Wi-Fi capabilities.