The need to remain connected to the Internet is at an all-time high, right? It is crucial that we remain connected to the Wi-Fi, and therefore, it becomes the demand of family members that Wi-Fi signals are available at every corner of the house.
Keeping up with these demands, a number of devices are available online, including Amazon’s Ero routers and Nest Wi-Fi from Google that are capable of enhancing the primary Wi-Fi signal. However, a team of researchers has recently found another way of taking care of this demand; a software protocol. According to researchers, this software protocol can boost the range of Wi-Fi by an additional 60 meters.
The research team is being headed by Brigham Young University, and has named the software protocol as On-Off Noise Power Communication (ONPC). An average Wi-Fi requires the speeds of at least one megabit per second to sustain a signal. However, with the ONPC protocol, the signal can be sustained by even a tiny one bit per second – one-millionth of the data speed that would have otherwise been needed.
How does the software protocol help do that? Well, it empowers the Wi-Fi enabled devices for transmitting wireless noise along with the data. BYU has said that this enables the device to transmit a series of 0s and 1s, thus turning on and off its signal in a specific configuration. This helps since this conveys to the Wi-Fi router that the device is still sending something even though no data is being transferred and thus allows the device to uphold the signal.
Professor Neal Patawri of Washington University said, ‘It’s basically sending 1 bit of information that says it’s alive.’ Upon testing, the ONPC protocol was capable of enhancing the range of a conventional gadget by about 67 feet as opposed to the conventional Wi-Fi. The exciting part? The ONPC software protocol is a software upgrade – implying that it can be used with any device that has Wi-Fi enabled.