Make sponsorships more valuable. Understand fan movement. Drive on-property revenue.
Stadiums have a rare advantage: a concentrated audience on property for a fixed window of time. GoZone Smart Wi‑Fi helps you turn that window into measurable revenue—by creating sponsor activation inventory, improving fan journey insights, and triggering automated campaigns that increase concession and merchandise sales.
Talk to an Expert to map sponsor inventory and campaign opportunities for your venue. Request a quote for your stadium and event schedule.
This article builds on our recent two-part series on hospitality technology infrastructure. In those articles, we covered how to plan network infrastructure and how WorldVue designs, deploys, and supports guest-facing technology.
In this article, we take a closer look at real-world hotel Wi-Fi design scenarios. Using heatmap examples, we show how room layout, construction materials, and access point (AP) placement affect signal strength in guest rooms.
These examples help explain why careful planning is critical to meet guest expectations. Small design decisions can have a major impact on the guest experience.
Wi-Fi heatmaps show how wireless signals travel through a space. They highlight areas with strong coverage and areas where signal strength drops.
Design teams use heatmaps to validate AP placement and coverage before installation. This helps ensure guests receive reliable connectivity throughout the room.
“Wi-Fi design is not just about adding more access points,” says Hitesh Patel, VP of Solution Architecture at WorldVue. “Placement needs to reflect how signals actually move through a space.”
The following examples reflect a typical mid-market hotel with standard-sized guest rooms. These properties often use consistent layouts and may include concrete or drywall construction.
This scenario shows an access point placed inside every guest room with concrete walls.
Concrete limits how Wi-Fi signals travel between rooms. With an AP in each room, coverage remains strong and consistent within each space.
This setup delivers reliable performance and avoids coverage gaps.
Takeaway: Concrete construction often requires an AP in each room to maintain consistent coverage.
This heatmap shows the same concrete-wall layout, but with one room missing an access point.
The room without an AP becomes a clear dead spot. Concrete walls block the signal from adjacent rooms.
Takeaway: Removing even one AP in concrete environments can create immediate coverage gaps.
“Concrete limits how far the signal can travel,” Patel explains. “If you remove an AP, coverage drops off quickly in that space.”
In this example, access points are installed in every other room with drywall construction.
Signals travel more easily through drywall. Coverage extends into adjacent rooms, though strength varies.
This setup can work in some layouts, but it may still create weaker areas.
Takeaway: Drywall allows the signal to travel, but shared APs can still lead to inconsistent performance.
This scenario removes one AP from the drywall configuration.
Even with better signal travel, the room without an AP shows a noticeable drop in coverage. The signal also drops in part of an adjacent room.
Takeaway: Even in drywall construction, removing APs reduces reliability in affected rooms.
“Construction materials play a major role in Wi-Fi performance,” Patel says. “Drywall allows more signal movement, but placement still matters.”
The following examples reflect a larger, upscale or full-service hospitality property with more spacious guest rooms and concrete construction. These properties often include suites or expanded layouts that require more careful Wi-Fi planning.
In this example, larger rooms use concrete construction with an AP in each room.
Coverage remains strong within each room, but the signal does not travel far beyond the walls.
This setup supports consistent performance despite larger spaces.
Takeaway: Larger rooms still benefit from dedicated APs, especially with dense construction.
This heatmap removes one AP from the larger room configuration.
The affected room shows a clear dead spot. Concrete walls prevent nearby APs from filling the gap.
Removing even one AP can significantly reduce coverage in larger spaces.
Takeaway: Coverage gaps increase quickly in larger rooms when AP density drops.
This scenario places APs in every other room in a large room, concrete-wall layout.
Coverage extends unevenly into adjacent rooms. Some areas show weak signals or inconsistent performance.
This approach may reduce hardware costs, but it can affect the guest experience.
Takeaway: Lower AP density can introduce inconsistent coverage, even if some signal reaches adjacent rooms.
This final example removes an AP from the every-other-room configuration.
Coverage gaps become more pronounced. Several areas show weak or inconsistent signals. One whole section of this floor shows no signal at all.
These results highlight the risk of reducing AP density in larger rooms with concrete construction.
Takeaway: Cost-saving decisions on AP count can lead to widespread performance issues in larger properties.
These heatmaps highlight a key point: Wi-Fi performance depends on design decisions made early in the process.
Room layout, construction materials, and cabling availability all influence the outcome. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Working with an experienced technology partner like WorldVue helps ensure these factors are evaluated before installation begins. With five decades of experience, we can help you avoid stumbling blocks that waste time and money.
For additional guidance, properties can reference industry resources such as our AAHOA technology toolkit. You can also explore our guide to technology planning for new construction hotels.
These examples highlight several important principles for hospitality Wi-Fi design:
These factors directly impact guest satisfaction, especially as streaming and connected devices continue to increase.
“Guests are connecting more mobile devices than ever,” Patel says. “It’s not uncommon for a family to bring 10 devices into their guest room. That puts more demand on the Wi-Fi network and makes consistent coverage more important.”
These real-world examples reinforce the recommendations outlined in our earlier articles. They also demonstrate why access point placement, cabling design, and early planning matter.
Strong infrastructure planning supports better Wi-Fi performance and a more consistent and enjoyable guest experience.
Wi-Fi performance starts with the right design decisions. Learn how WorldVue helps hospitality properties plan and deploy wireless networks that support guest-facing technology.
As broadband networks become complex, delivering a seamless home connection is critical. At MWC 2026, industry leaders met to explore the future of home connectivity. The panel featured experts from top tech companies. Speakers included Ayman Saidi from AWS, Jos Delbar from Airties, and Alex Gledhill from Intel. Importantly, they discussed the profound impact of AI-powered personalized Wi-Fi on both the subscriber experience and operators.
A major challenge for ISPs is driving business growth while keeping subscribers happy. Therefore, they need innovative solutions. During the discussion, the panel highlighted a compelling statistic. Specifically, operators adopting an AI-powered personalized Wi-Fi approach generate 40% more revenue. Furthermore, these operators actively reduce customer churn. Consequently, this shift toward tailored user experiences is completely transforming customer retention strategies.
Jos Delbar of Airties pointed out a crucial reality. Despite massive infrastructure investments, subscribers judge services based on their immediate home experience. In fact, the rising number of smart devices makes the home network highly complex. To solve this, Airties empowers operators to navigate this complexity smoothly. As a result, they deliver a highly individualized connection for every single user. You can explore our Airties Connectivity Experience Management solutions to see exactly how this works.
Delivering this intelligence requires robust processing power from the edge to the cloud. Next, Alex Gledhill detailed Intel’s long history in connectivity. This ranges from early standards up to the latest Wi-Fi 7. To enable these advanced services, Intel provides a powerful combination of hardware and software. Consequently, this supports the vast data required for AI-powered personalized Wi-Fi.
This spans from deploying new AI PCs at the edge to open-source collaboration. Ultimately, this culminates in scalable cloud services built within AWS. Specifically, backend operations run on Intel Xeon 6 processors using 8th generation AWS instances. Thus, operators gain the computational strength needed for real-time network optimization.
In conclusion, transitioning to an intelligent home network is now a business imperative. Operators must leverage the combined expertise of Airties software, Intel processing, and AWS cloud infrastructure. By doing so, they can successfully implement AI-powered personalized Wi-Fi. Ultimately, this delights customers, reduces support costs, and drives substantial long-term growth.
There was a time when power engineers and RF engineers occupied different ends of the hallway.
The RF team debated noise figure and linearity as if civilization depended on it. The power team worried about volts, amps and whether something might overheat. They shared a PCB but not always a worldview. If a spur appeared in the spectrum, it was clearly an RF problem. If something got hot, that was clearly a power problem.
Life was simpler then.
Today, those hallway boundaries are dissolving. Modern converters switch fast enough that layout parasitics resemble transmission lines. Gate loops behave like resonant structures. Package inductance stops being an afterthought and starts showing up in the lab as an unexpected oscillation.
And when power management is treated casually, the PCB occasionally rewards you with a full laser-light-and-pyrotechnics show.
The oscilloscope glows with overshoot. The spectrum analyzer fills with harmonics you never budgeted for. That tidy switching node becomes a broadband radiator with impressive range and zero respect for your carefully tuned RF front end. A near-field probe appears, wielded like a fire extinguisher.
The board may not literally ignite, but it can behave as if it is auditioning for a stadium tour.
Fast edges create ringing. Poor loop control creates EMI. A little optimism in the layout can turn a clean design review into spectral damage control. Once the show begins, it is very difficult to argue that power management belongs to someone else’s discipline.
Eventually the smoke clears — metaphorically, one hopes — and the lesson becomes obvious: high frequency is no longer exclusive to the RF team.
At the same time, RF systems have grown far less tolerant of sloppy electrons. AI accelerators, phased array radars, 5G radios and satellite payloads all share a dependency on tightly controlled, dynamically managed power. We celebrate the antenna aperture, beamforming algorithms and heroic PA linearity. But none of those subsystems behave well if the supply rail resembles a suggestion rather than a specification.
Ripple becomes phase noise.
Transients become spectral regrowth.
Impedance becomes destiny.
Consider a modern phased array. Hundreds or thousands of elements must maintain phase coherence while digital control, converters and RF front ends draw from shared power domains. A transient event in one corner of the board can surface elsewhere as jitter, drift or degraded dynamic range. In high order modulation schemes, that becomes degraded EVM. In radar systems, it can mean reduced detection sensitivity.
Efficiency, in this environment, is not merely a thermal metric. It becomes an RF specification.
As systems scale, so does power density. Data centers supporting AI workloads offer a convenient illustration. We speak of “the cloud” as if it floats. In reality, it is racks of silicon pulling tightly regulated current at astonishing speed. Switching frequencies rise to shrink passives and sharpen transient response. Those faster edges introduce coupling paths and parasitics that refuse to be ignored.
The physics is indifferent. Inductance does not care whether it resides in a matching network or a buck converter. A poorly controlled current loop will radiate whether it carries a carrier wave or a switching waveform. Maxwell’s equations remain gloriously impartial.
This is where the quiet revolution in power management becomes compelling. The focus is shifting from delivering power to managing it intelligently. Adaptive control loops respond in real time. Power domains are segmented to isolate sensitive circuits. Integration reduces loop area and parasitic uncertainty. Packaging and layout are treated as electromagnetic structures, not mechanical necessities.
In other words, power design increasingly looks like RF design — just with larger currents and fewer Smith charts.
For microwave engineers, this convergence is both challenge and opportunity. The electromagnetic environment inside modern systems is crowded. High di/dt edges, dense routing and compact integration leave little margin for wishful thinking. Power integrity analysis belongs in the same conversation as S-parameters and stability circles.
The opportunity is equally clear. RF engineers already think in terms of impedance, resonance and coupling. Applying that intuition to power distribution networks and switching loops can elevate overall system performance. When the supply rail is treated as part of the signal chain rather than background infrastructure, the architecture becomes more predictable and more robust.
Power management is no longer the quiet corner of the board that “just has to work.” In high performance infrastructure, aerospace and defense systems, it is a lever for differentiation. A well-managed power architecture enables higher linearity, lower noise floors and tighter timing margins. It allows RF subsystems to operate closer to their limits without being sabotaged by their own energy source.
We often talk about pushing the boundaries of frequency. Just as important is pushing the boundaries of how precisely we manage the energy that makes those frequencies possible.
The best light show, after all, is the one that never makes it past the layout review.
This article first appeared in Brent’s Musings in Microwave Journal.
Time pressure is real. And increasing. Competing demands from work, family, and social commitments place enormous strain on individuals already stretched thin. The average person juggles multiple tasks and responsibilities every day, trying to make the most of limited time by prioritizing certain tasks, delaying a few, and dropping some entirely.
The digitized world has further influenced habits. Bombarded by instant everything from one-click shopping to instantaneous payments and same-day deliveries, patience has diminished, rewiring expectations. The blurring of work-life boundaries by remote work, constant digital distractions, and the desire to be constantly available has exacerbated the perception of reduced time availability. Research on “time poverty” conducted by Ashley Whillans, a Harvard Business School professor, reinforces this, finding that a staggering 80% of Americans feel rushed or do not have enough time.[1]
Picture an employee working from home on a critical deadline. Suddenly, the internet connection drops. Every second of buffering, every audio drop-out, and every frozen screen adds to the stress. Every delay chips away at the customer’s trust and confidence in the internet services they pay for.
For online businesses, the real loss occurs when repeated disruptions frustrate customers enough to abandon tasks, question the business’s reliability, or even switch to a competitor. The high value placed on seamless, instant experiences makes even the slightest disruption unacceptable.
The high cost of digital friction highlights the need for businesses to reduce it and protect the customer experience. A frictionless digital experience is a cornerstone of positive customer perception and a meaningful contributor to their quality of life.
The impact of lag is both immediate and cumulative. When a digital experience falls short of customer expectations, revenue leakage follows. A Google study found that 53% of mobile users abandon any site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.[2]
In e-commerce, the impact can be brutal. Slow load times, buffering, or delayed transaction processing impact conversion rates, increase bounce rates, and contribute to significant losses from abandoned carts. Poor digital experiences directly drain bottom lines. Beyond direct sales loss, poor performance weakens brand perception and lifetime value. Reliable performance thus becomes a driver of revenue protection and growth and not just a technical metric.
Even the smallest digital inconveniences have an exaggerated impact on customer experience perception. Any delay translates into frustration and disappointment. For customers, technical causes mean nothing. The experience defines the brand.
These micro-frictions add up over time, eroding confidence, reducing engagement, and making customers less tolerant of future issues. When expectations are unmet, perceptions shift to distrust, leading customers to disengage or seek alternatives. Ultimately, lost time equates to lost satisfaction.
For internet service providers (ISPs) in particular, consistent network performance offers a powerful competitive edge. While speed and continuity are considered baseline requirements, there are now strategic differentiators that directly influence customer choice, loyalty, and quality of life. For example, customers expect uninterrupted streaming services, regardless of the many other apps running on the same network. Financial transactions must go through securely on the first try, without a hitch. Network coverage must be strong and available wherever the user is located.
A superior network experience reduces frustration, saves time, and enhances daily convenience, which defines the brand reputation, customer retention, and visible market differentiation.
For ISPs, a network optimization solution that delivers reliable, consistent digital experiences by intelligently managing traffic, reducing latency, and minimizing disruptions is a powerful strategic tool. The value extends beyond technical efficiency. It has a clear and direct positive impact on customer satisfaction and time savings for customers.
Where the industry historically measured network performance using the quality of service (QoS) metric that looked at the delivery of internet to the home, the benchmark has now shifted to the quality of experience (QoE) which is a measure of the customer’s actual experience and level of satisfaction all the way down to the application level.
When users experience superior QoE through smooth streaming, quick transactions, and responsive applications, brand confidence grows. This in turn drives higher engagement, stronger loyalty, and better commercial outcomes. Proactively optimizing performance allows organizations to give customers back valuable time, prevent revenue loss, and create a sustainable competitive moat.
Customer satisfaction and network performance are tightly interconnected drivers of business success. At its core, network optimization exists to give people their time back. For ISPs, this means going beyond QoS compliance to delivering real QoE. When network connections are seamless, human connections grow stronger. Families enjoy uninterrupted movie nights, students learn without disruptions, remote work happens reliably, and calls with loved ones never drop at the wrong moment. A quality network experience is proof of how technology can keep its promise to make life better and enhance the quality of experience.
By leveraging AI to build self-healing networks that improve online experiences, Aprecomm’s product suite helps save precious time for both customers and the service providers they depend on. As Theophrastus wisely wrote, “Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend”, so it’s certainly the most valuable thing we can help people save.
For patients who depend on insulin pumps, remote continuous glucose monitors, wearable heart-rate patches, pacemakers and other wireless medical technologies, the battery is a precious energy resource. When it comes to healthcare outcomes, how long – and how well – a battery does its job before it must be charged or changed isn’t a matter of convenience, it can define clinical safety and quality of life.
Unlike consumer electronics, these devices operate in tightly constrained biological environments where every milliwatt counts. Batteries power sensors, compute, storage and radio communications while also pushing RF signals through dense human tissue – one of the more challenging mediums for wireless signal propagation.
As medical devices become more connected, manufacturers increasingly face a complex question: How to guarantee robust wireless performance without accelerating battery drain? LitePoint’s testing expertise helps medical device designers solve that problem to efficiently validate RF performance, extend device uptime and improve product reliability all while ensuring patients receive timely, accurate, actionable data.
Why Wireless Testing Is Critical for Battery-Powered Medical Devices
Whether a device uses a replaceable cell or a sealed rechargeable battery, wireless testing plays an essential role in ensuring the radio transmitter and receiver behave reliably. For battery-powered medical devices, inefficient testing can shorten device life.
For example, a continuous glucose monitor patch rated for 14 days of use might lose an entire day of uptime simply because its RF tests consumed too much battery during production. Faced with this trade-off, some manufacturers may opt to reduce their RF test coverage. While this may seem like a fair exchange, shipping devices with unverified connectivity performance can cause problems down the line.
The primary battery-saving contribution that test delivers is optimizing energy during the test process itself, ensuring devices leave the factory at maximum capacity and with verified performance. Rigorous testing also reduces:
Without sufficient test data, companies may think they are saving battery capacity during manufacturing, when in fact they are compromising long-term device reliability and the patient experience.
What Makes Wireless Operation Uniquely Challenging in Biological Environments
Human tissue is a notoriously lossy environment for RF signals. The body absorbs and attenuates energy, increasing the amount of transmit power required to deliver data to an external receiver. This drives up energy consumption, especially for implantable devices like pacemakers or emerging ingestible sensors, where signals must travel through multiple tissue layers and fluid types.
Even for devices worn on the skin, performance varies based on placement, body orientation or whether the device is covered by clothing. These factors create propagation conditions far more complex than a smartphone or wearable used in open air.
Medical manufacturers often rely on specialized labs equipped with CTIA-style phantoms – human-body simulators filled with tissue-mimicking material – to quantify how much signal is lost through the body. While LitePoint does not conduct biological absorption testing directly, RF data gathered from LitePoint equipment complements phantom-based testing to give engineers a full picture of how signal strength, receiver sensitivity and antenna orientation perform in real-world conditions.
Test Solutions Help Optimize Connectivity and Energy Efficiency
Optimizing wireless efficiency in medical applications means tuning the radio for both performance and power. Device accuracy and battery life are tightly linked as missed data packets mean retransmissions, and retransmissions cost energy. But the longer a device stays in test mode, the more battery life it burns before ever reaching a patient.
LitePoint’s specializes in test time optimization using advanced techniques like proprietary Bluetooth over-the-air (OTA) test. This method measures radio transceiver performance using beacons without establishing a full Bluetooth connection, which allows manufacturers to capture critical RF data in far less time than a manual test using a standard Bluetooth adapter and software.
This preserves battery capacity and allows designers to test multiple devices in parallel, reducing manufacturing bottlenecks without compromising quality.
How Coexistence Testing Contributes to Better Battery Management
Many medical devices now incorporate multiple radios, for instance, Bluetooth LE for data transfers, Wi-Fi to sync data with the cloud and near-field communication (NFC) for device pairing and user authentication. While each radio may be optimized individually, coexistence issues can cause interference that forces retransmissions, increases latency and drains battery life.
The key is to determine where and when to run these tests as full coexistence testing is too power-intensive for many high-volume production lines. LitePoint helps manufacturers by moving testing earlier in the product development cycle or design verification environment, where engineers can identify interference patterns and tune channel plans or antenna layouts without draining battery life during manufacturing.
The Risks of Insufficient Wireless Testing in Medical Devices
The consequences of inadequate testing are more serious than a dropped Netflix video frame. At minimum, poor RF performance leads to inconsistent data transmission or premature battery drain. In the worst cases, devices risk missing early warning signs of a serious condition, such as a glucose spike or a heart arrhythmia.
There is also a significant brand-trust implication. Medical device companies spend years building credibility, and a single high-profile failure tied to missed wireless data can easily erode customer confidence.
Still, some manufacturers rely on shortcuts like “golden devices.” These prototype units are presumed to represent ideal RF performance, but unless they are repeatably calibrated, they’re subject to signal drift over time which can degrade accuracy. A dedicated tester eliminates that variability and ensures consistent measurement across every unit.
Likewise, radio duty-cycling, which determines how often the radio wakes to transmit or receive data, is primarily a design consideration. Test data can help refine these decisions by revealing signal margins, sensitivity thresholds or susceptibility to interference, while RF test helps designers understand how aggressively they can duty-cycle without data loss.
Connected Healthcare Is Reshaping Wireless Test
Medical device volumes can reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of units. Repeatability and speed are essential. LitePoint’s automation tools, such as the IQfact+™ platform and IQfactATM™ software for module-based designs, allow manufacturers to validate critical RF parameters quickly and consistently, even when they lack direct access to the underlying chipset. These tools help ensure every device shipped meets its RF performance targets, enabling reliable operation for months or years in the field.
Healthcare is becoming a high-connectivity device environment. Everything from blood pressure cuffs to ultrasound imaging have wireless – and cloud-connected – options. As adoption scales, the need for efficient, precise, low-impact RF testing becomes even more critical. LitePoint is continuing to innovate in areas such as OTA efficiency, beacon-based RF measurement and automation, all aimed at helping med-tech engineers extend battery life while ensuring the data their devices generate is trustworthy.
Embedded World 2026 made one thing clear: AI is no longer confined to the cloud—it’s moving decisively onto the device. Across our demos and conversations, a consistent theme emerged: intelligence is shifting closer to where data is created—into devices, environments, and the physical world.
From smart homes to industrial systems and a wide range of emerging robotics applications, the focus is evolving from what AI can do to how efficiently, responsively, and seamlessly it operates at the Edge.
Edge AI is evolving into context-aware, real-world intelligence. Systems are beginning to not just process data, but also to understand context and respond in real time.
At Embedded World, we brought this to life through integrated platforms that sense, process, and act—demonstrating how AI is transitioning from a technical capability to a tangible user experience across real-world applications.
In smart homes, AI is enabling devices to detect events, automate responses, and enhance security, while preserving privacy through local processing.
Our latest SYN765x solution integrates Wi-Fi® 7, Bluetooth® 6.0, and embedded AI compute into a single solution. The result: faster decision-making, reduced system complexity, and built-in security—bringing real-time intelligence directly into the home.
Audio devices are becoming more intelligent and responsive. From headsets to conferencing systems, AI enables real-time voice recognition, noise suppression, and contextual audio processing.
The Synaptics Astra SR80 family is designed for always-on, low-power intelligence — delivering adaptive, personalized audio experiences that respond almost instantly to users and their environments.
We also showcased the Synaptics Coral Dev Board, highlighting how advanced AI workloads can run directly on Edge devices. Powered by Astra SL2610 and Synaptics’ Torq™ NPU—alongside the Coral NPU by Google Research—the dev board enables efficient, on-device inference for both generative and perception-based AI.
Pre-configured with the Gemma™ model and supported by an open, MLIR-based toolchain, it provides a streamlined path from prototyping to production—making Edge AI more practical and accessible across smart home, industrial, wearables, and hearables applications.
Together, these demos illustrate the broader transition: from isolated Edge inference to systems that combine processing, connectivity, sensing, and AI into cohesive, production-grade applications.
Bringing AI to the Edge fundamentally transforms system performance and scalability. It enables:
These benefits are accelerating the shift toward distributed intelligence, where processing is embedded across connected devices rather than centralized in the cloud.
As Edge AI adoption accelerates, developer accessibility becomes critical.
Synaptics is focused on enabling innovation through support for open frameworks and toolchains, including evolving compiler technologies, exemplified by collaboration with partners such as Google Research, to expand AI capabilities at the Edge.
This approach helps reduce barriers to development and supports a more scalable ecosystem—allowing developers to build, deploy, and iterate more quickly.
AI is rapidly becoming a foundational capability across embedded systems.
At the center of this evolution is the shift toward integrated platforms that combine compute, connectivity, and sensing—regardless of the application.
Synaptics is enabling this transition by helping bring intelligence to the Edge, where it can deliver the greatest impact.
Thank you to everyone who visited Synaptics at Embedded World.
If we didn’t connect during the show, we welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation.
Because, as AI continues to evolve, one thing is clear:
Intelligence is most powerful when it’s embedded, efficient, and exactly where it needs to be.
Qualcomm’s engineering journey to evolve RF exposure management for modern wireless performance
When Qualcomm Technologies pioneered a new way to manage RF exposure through real-time averaging, it wasn’t simply about a new product. Behind this breakthrough development is a story about years of vision, collaboration and technical rigor that paved the way for a new era in RF exposure management. Spanning nearly a decade, the journey to develop this new technology — Time-Averaged Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), also known as TAS — stands as another example of our relentless drive to develop the best wireless experience possible and deliver maximum benefit to industry and consumers.
Developing TAS required years of systematic effort to redefine how wireless devices manage RF exposure. Our expertise in mobile gave us a unique line of sight to where the industry was headed, and we were pursuing novel ways to enable the growth required for better uplink performance.
The seeds of TAS were planted in 2012, when our engineers and scientists recognized a looming challenge: Legacy RF exposure management was holding back the promise of next-generation wireless technologies. The team saw that RF exposure management using static, capped peak power limits were stifling innovation and making it harder for device makers to deliver the performance users were demanding. Thus began a decade of dialog, research, testing and validation, culminating in a breakthrough solution that set a new standard for the industry.
This effort unfolded through several key milestones:
In 2012, we presented the concept of real-time averaging for RF exposure management to the FCC, initiating a dialogue that would shape future compliance procedures. We worked closely with regulators worldwide, advocating for the adoption of time averaging as a scientifically sound and practical approach to Regulatory compliance.
Between 2013 and 2015, Qualcomm Technologies developed and tested prototype algorithms and devices, including the first sub-6 GHz hand-held device. These efforts demonstrated the feasibility of real-time power averaging and provided critical data for regulatory review.
In 2016, we released to the regulators the first version of SAR measurement procedures for validating TAS algorithms. Since then, the test cases and procedures for regulatory certification of wireless devices enabled with TAS RF exposure management have been updated to validate enhancements and used to enable other TAS providers to enter the market.
As wireless technology has evolved, so have Qualcomm Technologies’ solutions. In 2018, our engineers expanded the algorithms to support 5G mmWave, addressing new challenges in device complexity and simultaneous multi-radio transmissions.
To ensure robust validation, Qualcomm Technologies partnered with leading compliance labs and third-party test houses worldwide. These collaborations helped to harmonize TAS testing procedures and meet the compliance test and regulatory certification needs of OEMs for on-time launch of their commercial products.
In 2018, the FCC first approved time averaging procedures for sub-6 GHz and mmWave devices, a direct result of our sustained engagement and technical advocacy. This enabled OEMs to design for compliance using time averaging, rather than relying on legacy power back-off methods.
Qualcomm invested significant resources in educating OEMs, operators, and labs about the new approach. Our teams provide training, consulting and technical support to accelerate industry adoption and ensure consistent, reliable compliance. To date, we have on-boarded 25 compliance labs in 8 different countries with 10 more labs in progress.
In April 2019, Qualcomm Technologies launched TAS as a commercial product, branded Smart Transmit, as an optional feature in the first 5G-enabled smartphones. Smart Transmit was more than a product introduction; it was the culmination of years of hard work, technical excellence and industry-wide collaboration. The technology was validated, the ecosystem was ready and the industry was aligned on the benefits of dynamic RF exposure management.
In addition to cellular, today Smart Transmit includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth® wireless technology, UWB, RFID and satellite radios. The rise of AI, XR and an ever-increasing number of wearables are placing even more importance on the efficiency and capacity of uplink transmission as devices send more and more data to the cloud for real-time learning and personalization.
The principles and methodologies developed during this journey paved the way for other OEMs and set new benchmarks for compliance and performance. The groundwork laid between 2012 and 2019 enabled not just a technical solution, but a transformation in how the industry approaches RF exposure compliance and device performance.
Qualcomm’s leadership in developing TAS reflects the strength of our research and development teams, our engineering ingenuity and our commitment to solving the hardest problems in wireless.
If you’re reading this from a desk in a climate-controlled office at HQ, take a second to appreciate your Wi-Fi. It doesn’t have to deal with strong winds, flammable vapors, or the constant threat of combustible gases. But for the IT teams managing “The Patch”- the remote rigs, sprawling pipeline networks, and high-stakes refineries—connectivity is a completely different beast.
In the Oil & Gas (O&G) world, “standard” equipment doesn’t just struggle – it fails. And in this industry, failure isn’t just an IT ticket: it’s a multi-million-dollar downtime event or, even worse, a safety hazard. As the industry pivots toward the “Digital Oilfield,” the demand for high-speed, reliable data at the extreme edge has never been higher. You need a network as tough as the crews operating the drills.
Let’s be real: trenching fiber to a remote wellhead or a moving offshore platform is a logistical nightmare and a financial black hole. Traditional wireless has often been the “best-effort” alternative, but it comes with its own baggage.
First, there are environmental extremes. We’re talking temperatures from -50°C to +75°C. Then there’s the HazLoc (Hazardous Location) factor. If your access point isn’t certified for Class I Division 2, ATEX, or IECEx, it may not even be allowed on your site. Finally, there’s a mobility challenge. Assets in O&G move—drilling rigs shift, service vehicles roam, and autonomous robots are now entering the fray. Maintaining a seamless connection while these assets are in motion has historically been the “Holy Grail” of industrial networking.
This is where the Cisco Catalyst IW9167E-HZ steps into the ring. Think of it as the Swiss Army Knife of industrial wireless, specifically engineered for some of the most volatile environments on Earth.
The “HZ” stands for Hazardous Locations, and it wears its certifications like a badge of honor. With a heavy-duty, IP67-rated design, it’s built to withstand the vibration of a rig floor and the corrosive air of a coastal refinery. But it’s what’s inside that really changes the game for O&G IT professionals.
Why choose between local access and robust backhaul when you can have both in one box? The IW9167E-HZ features tri-radio capabilities that allow it to run Wi-Fi 6/6E and Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (URWB) simultaneously.
By integrating both into a single device managed through a “single pane of glass” with Cisco Catalyst Center, you’re not just improving performance – you’re slashing your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). No more managing separate, siloed networks for backhaul and access.
We know IT teams are under pressure to “AI-enable” their operations. According to the 2024 State of Industrial Networking Report, 48% of industrial leaders believe AI will have the greatest impact on their networking strategy over the next five years. In O&G, this isn’t science fiction – it’s happening now.
The right connectivity does more than keep systems running; it acts as a safeguard for your personnel and a catalyst for operational efficiency. Whether you are connecting a remote wellhead or managing a complex refinery, with the IW9167E-HZ you are building a resilient foundation that supports advanced AI, strengthens cybersecurity, and ensures that critical data is always available, even in the most volatile environments.
DNSFilter Wins Market Leader Placement for Internet Filtering, Protective DNS, SMB Cybersecurity in 14th Annual Global InfoSec Awards at #RSAC 2026
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – MARCH 23, 2026 – DNSFilter is proud to announce we have won the following award(s) from Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM), the industry’s leading electronic information security magazine:
“We are thrilled to be named a market leader in three distinct categories by Cyber Defense Magazine during their 14th anniversary. On the heels of launching our DNS PreCheck and CyberSight capabilities, we have shown that we are committed to innovation and supporting enterprises, SMBs, and MSPs,” said Ken Carnesi, CEO of DNSFilter.
“DNSFilter embodies three major features we judges look for to become winners: understanding tomorrow’s threats, today, providing a cost-effective solution and innovating in unexpected ways that can help mitigate cyber risk and get one step ahead of the next breach,” said Gary S. Miliefsky, Publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine.
We’re thrilled to be a member on this coveted group of winners, located here: http://www.cyberdefenseawards.com/
Please join us at the #RSAC RSAC Conference 2026, https://www.rsaconference.com/usa today, as we share our red-carpet experience and proudly display our trophy online at our website, our blog and our social media channels.
About DNSFilter
DNSFilter is a cybersecurity company that protects every click, leveraging AI-driven content filtering and threat protection to block threats up to 10 days earlier than competitors. DNSFilter’s solution secures workers wherever they are, helping organizations boost productivity, minimize compliance risk, and protect corporate brands on public Wi-Fi networks. Trusted by more than 45,000 organizations worldwide, DNSFilter enables organizations to deploy powerful protection in minutes while gaining deep visibility into their security posture. Learn more at dnsfilter.com.
About the Global InfoSec Awards
This is Cyber Defense Magazine’s thirteenth year of honoring InfoSec innovators from around the Globe. Our submission requirements are for any startup, early stage, later stage, or public companies in the INFORMATION SECURITY (INFOSEC) space who believe they have a unique and compelling value proposition for their product or service. Learn more at www.cyberdefenseawards.com
