Successful test of new technology 'WiLo' that extends Wi-Fi communication distance, demonstrating communication up to 500m

A research team led by Deming Gao, a professor at the School of Information Science and Technology at Nanjing Forestry University in China, has announced that it has developed a new long-distance communication technology called ' WiLo ' by combining existing Wi-Fi and the Long Range (LoRa) network protocol.

WiLo: Long-Range Cross-Technology Communication from Wi-Fi to LoRa | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Wi-Fi Goes Long Range (LoRa) on New WiLo Standard - IEEE Spectrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org/wi-fi-lora-hybrid

Until now, Wi-Fi has had problems with its limited short-distance communication range and high power consumption, while LoRa has long-distance communication capabilities and low power consumption, making it widely used in IoT applications, but it required dedicated hardware.

The research team combined the two protocols to create a new protocol called WiLo, which they say 'reduces cost, complexity and potential points of failure, making IoT applications more efficient and scalable.'

WiLo uses OFDM, a Wi-Fi data multiplexing standard, to emulate LoRa's long-distance chirp signal , enabling long-distance communication using existing Wi-Fi devices. In the research team's experiments, the success rate was 96% at distances of up to 500 meters both indoors and outdoors.

On the other hand, WiLo requires Wi-Fi devices to perform signal emulation, which increases the power consumption of the devices. Gao said, 'To commercialize WiLo, the system needs to be further optimized for energy efficiency, data rate, robustness against interference, etc., which will require additional software development and testing in various IoT environments.'