IoT Congestion Is Challenging Engineers to a ‘Dual’

Engineers working on IoT design and deployment are being challenged to a “dual” due to IoT congestion, but this has little to do with battles of honor like the one that involved Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. This challenge may not be worthy of a Broadway musical, but the stakes are high for people designing IoT devices and building out IoT networks that rely on Wi-Fi connectivity.

Because IoT networks in a range of industries rely so heavily on Wi- Fi networks, the resulting network congestion and RF complexity too often lead to degraded performance and reliability. The dueling demands of so many Wi-Fi-based IoT devices push Wi-Fi-based networks to their limits. As a solution, engineers can resolve all of these demands with the adoption of dual-band Wi-Fi. This provides dramatically higher performance and more reliable connections, even in highly-congested IoT environments such as industrial settings, hospitals, and manufacturing plants.

This white paper provides an overview of the role that dual-band Wi-Fi can play in IoT deployments. It also provides a number of practical design considerations that engineers can use as they begin integrating dual-band Wi-Fi into their product development pipeline and IoT deployment plans, with a focus on addressing IoT congestion.

Before discussing dual-band Wi-Fi in depth, however, we should mention that this is the newest in an ongoing series of Laird Connectivity white papers and other resources for engineers designing with Wi-Fi. The following prior materials provide practical information and best practices:

• Testing Wi-Fi Functionality in Medical Devices
• 802.11n and Medical Devices
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Coexistence
• FCC Opens 6 GHz Frequency, Opening the Future of Wi-Fi

For other resources about IoT design, please visit: https://www.lairdconnect.com/resources