Validation of New Technologies: WiGig and iSCT (Intel R Smart Connect Technology); and Study of Framework for Seamless Connectivity

Abstract

Validation is much beyond testing. It includes “enabling”, “standardizing”, “integrating” and “delivering”. A feature may work successfully when stand-alone, but when it is integrated at system level, co-existence, compatibility and interoperability with other features is a challenge. The scope of work is to validate WiGig and Intel® Smart Connect Technology (iSCT) on an upcoming Intel platform. High speed wireless data transfer and faster wireless connectivity is the need of the hour. The existing band-2.4GHz and 5 GHz are heavily congested and this calls for exploring other bands for wireless communication. WiGig technology, based on the IEEE 802.11ad standard, uses 60 GHz band, supporting data rate upto 7 Gbps, and can co-exist with WiFi and Bluetooth radios. The tri-band solution is emerging as one of the promising wireless technology, improving user experience. Intel® Smart Connect Technology is designed to update programs by periodically waking the PC from Sleep/Standby mode for a brief period of time, improving content availability latency from several minutes to few seconds and providing Always Updated user experience. Also, it allows user to remotely access the system even when it is sleeping or is in stand-by mode providing Always reachable user experience even in low power mode. Objective is to enable all the features of WiGig and iSCT on upcoming Intel platform and validate it successfully for timely release. Devices available today typically have several ways or mechanisms of connecting to a remote device (over Bluetooth, WiFi, etc). There is however no synergy or consistency between all these different technologies in terms of how they work, how they connect, etc. If all these wireless pairing experiences are streamlined, end user can have a feel of seamless connectivity. A novel framework- CCF (Common Connectivity framework) by Intel, described in this report, opens up new possibilities for orchestrating wirelessly connected experiences. Project may be seen as consisting of two parts: Part 1 focuses on enabling WiGig and iSCT on upcoming Intel platform and validating it at a platform level so that it can be given out to external customers (OEM/ODMs) and bug escapes can be avoided. Early system integration and platform validation helps OEM/ODMs to hit TTM (Time to Market) with higher quality and reduce post launch support costs. Work mainly includes creation of test plan for validation, execution of test cases and debugging of issues faced, to ensure that quality release criteria is met. Part 2 focuses on understanding Intel® CCF and deriving its validation scope at platform level.