Emerging Commercial Applications Using the 60 GHz Unlicensed Band: Opportunities and Challenges

The 60 GHz band has emerged as an international spectrum opportunity for short-range wireless communication networks. In this paper, opportunities that may leverage 60 GHz and the technology trends that will impact the commercial deployment of systems utilizing the 60 GHz frequency band are discussed. Millimeter-wave frequency bands have historically been costly to utilize and traditionally used almost exclusively for government and non-consumer products. Recent and ongoing advances in semiconductor technology and low cost high frequency packaging can be leveraged for low cost solutions that enable widespread deployment. An example of such a system operating in the millimeter-wave spectrum where bandwidths of ~3 GHz have been achieved. Multi-gigabit data transmission and reception over significant distances has also been realized to demonstrate the potential throughput of such a broadband wireless system.