What is the V Band?

IEEE Radar V Band

The V-band as defined by IEEE is a frequency range from 40 to 75 GHz. IEEE uses letters to signify a range of frequencies from 1 to 110 GHz. The V-Band is license free in many countries and is most often used for wireless backhaul and point to point/point to multi-point radio links. These systems are primarily used for high capacity, line of sight communications.

Availability of a wider bandwidth made this band a hit in the point-to-point (pt-to-pt) radio solution market. Radio links operating in the V band can be densely deployed in congested cities without interference, and without need for digging for cables and fiber optics, which can be costly, slow and highly disruptive. Radios providing full-duplex data rates up to 10 Gbps over distances close to one mile or more are easily available today.

In 2013, IEEE introduced the 802.11ad wireless access systems (also called as WiGig) in V band, which allow devices to communicate wirelessly at multi-Gigabit speeds and deliver high-definition content over shorter distances.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has allocated the frequency band from 57 to 71 GHz for unlicensed wireless systems.

The V band from 57 to 66 GHz has been used for a long time now for high capacity terrestrial millimeter wave communications systems.

One issue that arises when using the V-Band is the high absorption of signals due to Oxygen at this frequency. This results in significant absorptions of signals and thus the V-Band usually has a range of around 2 km.

Click here to see the other IEEE/Radar Letter Frequency Bands.