WifiNigel

For the past few years, I've maintained a white paper on the use of the 5GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi networks here in the UK. As Wi-Fi text books tend to focus on the spectrum available in the USA, I put this document together to clarify how 5GHz spectrum may be used in the UK. Following the release of a Voluntary National Specification document by Ofcom in August 2017 ( VNS 2030/8/3 ), additional channels became available for use in the UK on 5GHz. As we now have additional spectrum, it's time for an update to my white paper to detail the new spectrum that is available. Prior to updating the white paper, I published a summary sheet that shows the new spectrum allocation. This can be obtained obtain from my previous blog article:  UK 5GHz WLAN Spectrum Allocation (August 2017)  (this is definitely one to print off and laminate). I have now completed my updates to the white paper, which I am pleased to share with you now. Note that in addition to adding the new spectrum de...

In August 2017, Ofcom in the UK made some additional channels available in the 5GHz band for license exempt usage. The details can be found in the following Ofcom document:  VNS – Voluntary National Specification 2030/8/3 This means that we have an additional 6 x 20Mhz channels available for use here in the UK for our Wi-Fi networks. This also translates in to a possible additional 3 x 40MHz channels and 2 x  80 MHz channels. I have put together a cheat sheet showing the 5GHz channels now available in the UK, together with a few useful references. You can download the sheet from here: link

Plans for new spectrum allocation for WiFi networks in North America are regular fodder for many blog and news articles that I  see scrolling past in the many RSS feeds that I monitor for WiFi related news. However, information about plans for additional spectrum allocation within the UK isn't quite so widely covered (in fact, I'd go so far as to say that it is largely ignored). But, here in the UK we still face the same issues as many other areas of the world: an explosion in mobile devices, massive deployment of WiFi networks in homes and businesses, and an ongoing increase in bandwidth demands. WiFi in the UK operates on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. We have 13 channels allocated for WiFi on 2.4GHz, but for practical purposes, only 3 may be used across a wireless LAN. On the 5GHz band, we have 19 channels allocated to WiFi, but are generally limited to using only 16 of those channels due to restrictions in supporting 3 channels that may interfere with weather rada...

(Note: this white paper has been superseded with this new updated version ) I put together a few articles a few months ago talking about how the unlicensed 5GHz band is used for WiFi here in the UK. I thought it might be a good idea to consolidate all of the information that I found in to one place, so that people researching the topic could find and digest it more easily. Therefore I put together a white paper about how 5GHz is used for WiFi here in the UK. You can download it from here. There will no doubt be errors, omissions and other facts that folks would like to suggest. So, please feel free to drop me a note and I'll update this document from time to time to improve the quality of information that it contains. Nigel. Download the document from the following sources: Scribd Google Docs