By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Can Wi-Fi operating in the full 6 GHz band boost productivity for medical faculty and students – and even enable the use of innovative AR/VR techniques for medical training? The short answer is of course a resounding yes – but as always, seeing is believing. A new demonstration and pilot project at the prestigious Ramathibodi Chakri Naruebodindra Medical Institute (CNMI) Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, is using full 6 GHz band Wi-Fi to push the boundaries of health sciences and education.
The theoretical benefits of using the full 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi operation may be quite obvious but there is nothing like experiencing pioneering wireless technology in real life – such as when VR is used for medical training. To that end the Wi-Fi Alliance, USTDA, Ramathibodi Hospital, HPE Aruba Networks, Intel, Meta, and Thailand’s NBTC (National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission) have teamed up to deliver the first comprehensive full-band 6 GHz Wi-Fi demo in the South-East Asia region.
The project has received special permission from the Thai telecoms regulator NBTC to use the full 1200 MHz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band at the CNMI institute for two years. Demo and trial activities started in July and now the project team is pushing forward with the next phases that involves a pilot deployment integrated into CNMI’s classroom network followed by a public industry workshop in October of this year.
“We’re demonstrating two strong use cases: First, we’re showing the obvious benefits of wirelessly connecting VR medical training applications. Secondly, students and staff can experience the huge boost in connectivity within a 200-seat classroom setting when streaming UHD-quality course material to each individual user. In both cases the demo compared network speed, capacity, and quality using only the lower 500 MHz of the band to what happens when the full 1200 MHz of band is applied,” says Gaurav Jain, Senior Director of Engineering at Wi-Fi Alliance.
The VR headset demo – using Meta Quest Pro headsets and Ramathibodi hospital’s ‘Anatomy Viz’ app for a comprehensive analysis of human anatomy – underscored the need for the full 6 GHz band to avoid connectivity quality issues, Gaurav Jain says. “Co-channel interference actually resulted in motion-sickness for VR users, which is really one of the worst things that can happen. It happens when the data rates are too low and the latency is too high. In the high-density classroom demo scenario, the hospital’s faculty members experienced 8k video buffering and glitches as well as slow file transfers,” he says.
“The demo optimized performance when using the entire 1200 MHz band for the same applications and with an identical network load. The demo underscored that utilising only the lower 500 MHz is not sufficient to deliver on advanced Wi-Fi use cases and applications in dense deployments. Optimal Wi-Fi performance in dense environments relies on a greater number of wider channels that requires availability and use of the entire 1200 MHz in the 6 GHz band,” Gaurav Jain says.
None of these problems occurred when using the entire 1200 MHz band for the same applications and with an identical setup. Everything proceeded smoothly, he says.
The next phase of the project is to show the value of full-band 6 GHz Wi-Fi in an environment with a high density of heavy users. A pilot 6 GHz Wi-Fi network will be deployed in a 500-seat classroom so that students and staff can experience full-band 6 GHz Wi-Fi under normal teaching conditions. Finally, a public industry workshop will be held at the conclusion of the project in October of this year, Gaurav Jain says.
While some Asian countries have allocated the lower 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi operations (5925-6425 MHz) – these include Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, and Philippines – only South Korea has thus far allocated the full 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi. The US, Canada, and parts of the Americas region have adopted the full 6 GHz band. “This demo and pilot will go a long way to showcase the value of full 6 GHz band Wi-Fi to everyone involved. We also hope that regulators from the rest of the region will be inspired when they directly experience the benefits,” says Gaurav Jain. For more details on global 6 GHz regulation also see here.
/Claus.
