[nuand]

60GHz also limits you to direct line of sight. 60GHz propagates similar to a spotlight.

[Havoc]

How "direct" are we talking? I'm sitting 4 meters away from my router - but with a thin prefab wall in between.

[femto]

You'll get about 10 metres in an office with cubicles with chest high partitions. Page 6 of the paper "A High Speed Wireless LAN" by Skellern, Lee and others in the Jan/Feb 1997 edition of IEEE Micro has a diagram showing coverage for OFDM in a typical office at a centre frequency of 40GHz. 60GHz will be worse than this, as oxygen in the air absorbs 60GHz quite stongly [2]. I'm not sure how the power transmitted by 802.11ad compares to the above measurements, but the measuremensts in the paper were taken with 60GHz WiFi in mind, so they should be representative.

[1] http://www.jwdalton.com/papers/ieee_micro_1997_wlan.pdf

[2] https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Do...

---

Edit for clarity. And I should also mention I'm an author on that paper.

[foobarian]

At 60GHz it's almost more appropriate to compare to a laser pointer. The wall will probably be a problem.

[nuand]

The laser analogy is definitely accurate given today's technology. I just don't think they'll be able to productize something that has that high of an antenna gain. I'm really hoping and thinking that we'll see some smart antenna advances.

[Havoc]

A quick google suggests I might still be fine. Its advertised as "in the same room" so it will probably punch through a thin non-stone wall.

[jrockway]

A sheet of paper will block the signal, so it probably won't go through that wall.

[cbr]

> non-stone wall

Drywall is made of stone.

[archimedespi]

Drywall impedes RF signals much less than stone.

[nuand]

It will depend on the material, but I don't think 802.11ad can even penetrate through sheetrock. Honestly it may even be so bad that a sneeze could knock your connection out for a few seconds.