New Kit Sends Gigabit WiFi Network Speeds Through 30cm of Concrete

A Silicon Valley company called Airvine has developed a rather unique network bridge that can extend a Local Area Network (LAN) running at multi-Gigabit speeds, seemingly using only WiFi style wireless signals via the 2.4GHz and 6GHz bands, through “up to” 30cm (12″) of solid concrete walls – it can even bend around 90-degree solid concrete corners.

As somewhat of a general rule, wireless networking signals don’t usually like going through solid walls and the thicker they are, the more trouble you’ll have. Suffice to say that 30cm of solid concrete would normally be a bit of a problem and any signals that do get through (usually indirectly) will run at extremely slow data speeds.

However, instead of solving this problem by using cables and a powerful drill, Airvine has developed a new type of point-to-point layer 2 network bridge – called the WaveCore 1000-RH. Stick one of these on either side of the wall and it creates a “bridge” for your network to expand onto the other side of the wall. In testing it is claimed to have delivered speeds just shy of 4Gbps through 30cm of concrete (officially, the device only claims speeds of “over” 2.5Gbps through 20.3cm of concrete).

Concrete walls average 20 cm (8″) or more in Commercial Real Estate (CRE) buildings around the world. These types of walls can form a building’s perimeter, serve as interior load bearing walls and as protection for spaces such as fire control or network server rooms.

Vivek Ragavan, CEO of Airvine, said:

“We have proven with customers for more than a year now that the WaveTunnel provides cost-effective Gigabit-speed connectivity in MDUs, factories, warehouses, conference centers and other similarly large properties.

However, we could not achieve the company’s founding vision of providing pervasive indoor wireless connectivity because we literally kept running into concrete barriers. The WaveCore system surmounts these obstacles and enables us to connect wirelessly any building with any floor plan anywhere.”

The performance of this setup (we want to call it Concrete-Fi) will probably vary a bit depending upon the type of concrete (cement and aggregate combinations, not to mention any steel supports), although it’s a fascinating solution that we haven’t really seen done quite like this before. But how much the kit actually costs is currently unclear, although the fact it’s aimed at higher end users (businesses etc.) suggests it probably isn’t cheap.

One other problem, at least from the UK perspective, is that it seems like the WaveCore uses both the lower and upper parts of the 6GHz spectrum band. Doing that is fine in the USA, but in the UK Ofcom is still procrastinating over what to do about the upper 6GHz (6425 to 7125MHz) band (here); it’s unclear how their desire for a hybrid approach that shares this band with mobile operators may impact this kit.