By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Scratching your head as to what ‘non-reciprocal transmissive RF metasurface’ even means? You’re not alone. This radical new approach to delivering Wi-Fi signals to where they are needed most is already yielding remarkable results. It may eventually become the Wi-Fi coverage Swiss army knife that enterprises and consumers never knew they needed. LATYS will release its new and improved FOCUS device in April, the company says.
It’s not an antenna and it’s not a repeater, either. It’s an active RF transmissive metasurface that delivers 10-15 dB RF signal gain in a particular direction. It will likely retail at US$250 – although the price will eventually come down, LATYS says. Commercial network planning software companies don’t know how to include it in their models because it’s neither antenna nor AP and signal boost and direction depends on the source (AP). Welcome to the fascinating brave new world of the LATYS FOCUS.
What’s remarkable is that this new device type turns out to be surprisingly versatile. In principle the device can be configured to receive a Wi-Fi signal at any angle of incidence (in practice within 60 degrees) and then transmit the boosted signal at any other angle. But it also appears to improve Wi-Fi performance generally, for example in the case of Wi-Fi coverage for mining tunnels, LATYS says.
“We’re in the process of discovering the kinds of performance boosts that FOCUS can deliver. In the case of a mining company in Quebec, the objective was to boost Wi-Fi coverage around corners and along mining tunnels, which was easily achieved with three FOCUS devices. What we didn’t expect is that the FOCUS in general improves Wi-Fi channel conditions by quite a lot,” says Artmiz Golkaramnay, founder and VP of Product & Business Development at LATYS.
LATYS is also testing out the FOCUS for other industrial use cases that are otherwise challenging (and typically costly) to cover with conventional Wi-Fi equipment. “Warehouses and manufacturing facilities are good use cases for FOCUS because they sometimes involve spaces and equipment that makes for tricky RF environments. In one case we’re working with a manufacturer of giant metal plates for signage. In many cases one or two LATYS FOCUS units can fix an otherwise complicated RF coverage issue very cost-effectively. We believe FOCUS can be instrumental in lowering total cost of ownership for a subset of enterprise Wi-Fi networks,” Artmiz says.
The FOCUS takes 5 minutes to install and consumes as little as 5 Watts of power. Since it only works at the physical (RF) layer – and otherwise doesn’t tinker with Wi-Fi signals – it retains or even improves both Wi-Fi latency and speed. The plug-and-play capabilities of the Focus arguably makes it well suited for the consumer market, too. So is this the Swiss army knife of Wi-Fi coverage solutions?
Wi-Fi veteran Greg Ennis is bullish on the opportunities that LATYS’ new technology represents although – as often is the case with radical innovation – its mass-market use cases may not be crystal clear at the moment. “It’s a radically different kind of Wi-Fi product. Right now we’re working to understand what this thing is and what it can do. Ultimately, the users will know what to use it for,” he says. Greg Ennis points out that such units will eventually carry a price tag that competes with conventional repeaters.
He also points out that the technology is potentially extremely versatile and easy to use. “One can imagine self-configuring point and click units that set themselves up to resolve specific coverage or performance issues in the home or for the enterprise.
Metasurfaces can in principle also be designed to any size and hidden behind art or other architectural elements, for example. They’re also completely vendor agnostic, which is a big benefit,” he says. Greg Ennis is Technical Advisory Board Member for LATYS and also the author of recently released “Beyond Everywhere”, a book about the history of Wi-Fi.
The next LATYS FOCUS device will be released in April and will support a full 1 GHz of Wi-Fi bandwidth (in the 5 GHz band). Current 200 MHz model is available upon request by contacting LATYS via the FOCUS homepage here.
/Claus.
