It’s time for an update on Wi-Fi. On this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, we take a look at what’s the latest, what’s coming, what’s real, and what’s not so real, all as it pertains to Wi-Fi.

To get answers to these questions, I spoke with Sivaram Trikutam, Senior Vice President of Wireless Products at Infineon Technologies. Sivaram and I went through the latest protocols to understand how things like range, power, frequency, and bandwidth will change (or not) going forward.

To that end, Infineon just launched its latest Wi-Wi-Fi transceiver, the AIROC ACW741x product family, which the company claims is the industry's first 20-MHz tri-radio device optimized for IoT applications.

There are lots of different ways that IoT devices can communicate. In some instances, that’s a good thing. But in other cases, it’s hindering the growth of IoT devices. And that’s a problem, at least according to Mike Rohrmoser, a Vice President at Digi.

In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, Mike explains how protocols are evolving and what needs to occur to ensure interoperability between all devices, including those that may have been in the field for decades.

There’s no moss gathering under the Connectivity Stands Alliance, as the group recently announced the latest rev of the ZigBee spec, version 4.0. This new version enhances the security efforts from the previous generation, and also takes a hard look at smart energy in the latest devices.

One of the keys, as you’ll hear, is the backward compatibility that’s been maintained. Faisal Bhaiyat, the Co-Chair of ZigBee Working Group, Connectivity Standards Alliance, and also a Senior Software Architect with Silicon Labs, fills me in on the details on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.