Gigabit Wi-Fi in 2012

As the current wireless network format 802.11n is now officially validated, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced to be working on the next generation Wi-Fi. Several technologies are being evaluated. The first one is the easiest one to develop as it will simply benefit from the current hardware by using 3x3 connections simultaneously on 3 channels, leading to a theoretical transfer speed of 450 Mbits/s with the current frequencies.
The second option requires more in-depth evolution. Planned for December 2012, it should reach Gigabit/s and potentially later on 10 Gbits/s. To obtain such results, the format 802.11 ac will use simultaneously channels with large bandwidth, moving from the current 20MHz-wide channels to 40, 80 or even 160 MHz. One should not forget that for avoiding saturation and following regulations, most improvement will be done in the current 5 GHz frequency band. In addition, if data transfer will reach high speed, the 5 GHz band has a lower effective range than the 2.4 GHz band.