Alliance inaugurated for WLAN optimal application

Participants inaugurate World WLAN Application Alliance (WAA) at a ceremony Friday. Courtesy of the organizers

A summit that witnessed the launch of the World WLAN Application Alliance (WAA) was held Friday in Shenzhen, gathering 18 founding members including Huawei, ZTE and Tencent to pool ideas on building an open, internationalized wireless local access network (WLAN) platform, a scenario-based WLAN accreditation system and optimizing WLAN application experience.

The alliance, with 55 members including research institutions, telecommunications operators, equipment and devices makers with their businesses covering the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, aims to build a unified WLAN accreditation system. This system is expected to bring optimal application experiences in different scenarios such as households, industrial parks, smart power grids, industrial Internet, intelligent medical treatment, IoT and other application scenarios.

To achieve its goal, the alliance plans to release three sets of accreditation standards, authorize five accreditation laboratories, develop WLAN tests regarding basic functions, coverage, signal channel resources distribution, network grouping, reliability, and disruption resistance, and ensure optimal WLAN applications in major scenarios such as households and industrial parks.

“Setting WLAN standards, providing accreditation and open source among members will be three major focal tasks of the alliance in order to attain its strategic goal,” Yang Tao, secretary general of the WAA, said in an interview Friday.

As the first industrial and standard organization in WLAN application and accreditation in the world, the alliance set its target to form a standard accreditation system of global influence by 2025. Its accreditation scenarios will be gradually expanded from households, industrial parks, to various industrial sectors such as power grids, industrial Internet, intelligent medical treatment and IoT, according to Yang.

Data shows that more than 70% of the network flow is accessed through WLANs. The industrial value of WLAN will reach 3.4 trillion yuan (US$493 billion).

“The WAA will collaboratively work with other industrial alliances such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to form an accommodating ecological environment for the further development of WLAN industries. This is the value the WAA provides,” said Zhang Ping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who serves as chairperson of the alliance.