Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to accept this award for innovation on behalf of the 802.11 Working Group. That working group has been the source of the technology underlying the “WiFi” brand. It has been used by IEEE-SA as a successful example of the IEEE-SA’s standards development program. The 802.11 technology has had a very visible impact on our lives – the ability to communicate wherever you are, and is well aligned with the mission of the institute.
802.11 technology is driven by two trends – to evolve/optimize existing technology (802.11b/g/n/ac/ax), and to try something different and risky. 802.11ad is an example of doing something new and challenging. One such challenge is to achieve usable range in the 60 GHz radio band in which it operates. By analogy, communication in this band is a bit like somebody pointing a torch and tapping out a message, and somebody else just able to see that torch with a telescope, and both operating in a thick fog. One innovation of 802.11ad is to provide effective “lenses”, using multiple antennas and beamforming. Another innovation is to have the torch and telescope pointing exactly at each other at the right time. Using these innovations, 802.11ad achieves very high wireless link throughput (8 Gbps), combined with low latency (few milliseconds) and permits spatial re-use. These characteristics open new usage models in multimedia, docking and enterprise data connectivity and address some of the most challenging requirements for 5G systems.
I am proud to say that the 802.11 working group continues to create innovative standards with commercial relevance. We have 8 projects under way at the present. I will share this award with the 802.11 working group participants in January. Thank you again for the honor and recognition you have shown the 802.11 working group.
Carlos Cordeiro also received a "Standards Medallion" award, but was unable to collect it in person.
