Aura Wireless Wins 2026 WBA Award for Best Wi-Fi Innovation

Aura’s patented Apogee antenna platform wins Best Wi-Fi Innovation for delivering large-area coverage with a fraction of traditional network equipment.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL, UNITED STATES, October 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Aura Wireless, maker of the patented Apogee™ family of high-performance wireless antennas, today announced that it has won the 2026 Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) Award for Best Wi-Fi Innovation for the Apogee platform.

The award recognizes Aura Apogee as a “Patented Software-Defined Antenna Platform Engineered to Solve Enterprise Wi-Fi Coverage Problem in Large Outdoors and Challenging Indoor Environments.”

“When we started Aura, we wanted to bring Wi-Fi to big outdoor spaces, and we quickly found out the technology to do it didn’t exist. So we built it. Winning Best Wi-Fi Innovation from the Wireless Broadband Alliance is a tremendous honor for our team, who have spent years proving that large-scale Wi-Fi doesn’t have to mean more hardware. When you fix the coverage properly, businesses can use their space the way they want to, and the costs come down too. That’s what Apogee was built to do.” — Elaine Healy, Co-founder and CEO, Aura Wireless

Large outdoor spaces such as rail yards, farms, parking lots, and indoor spaces such as warehouses and manufacturing facilities have always been hard to cover with Wi-Fi. Smartphones, scanners and sensors transmit at low power, so they struggle to stay connected over long distances, and FCC rules limit how much power antennas can transmit. The usual workaround has been to keep adding access points, which drives up cost, complexity and maintenance.

Aura took a different approach. Apogee is the world’s first antenna platform that overcomes strict FCC RF power limits to produce Wi-Fi coverage areas of unprecedented size and performance. Instead of adding more equipment, Aura solved the problem at its source.

What makes Apogee the best Wi-Fi innovation:

– It hears devices others can’t. Aura’s patented Asymmetric Gain™ technology dramatically improves how well the network hears low-power devices like smartphones, tablets and IoT sensors, while keeping transmit power fully FCC compliant. Devices stay reliably connected over large distances.

– More than 10X coverage. A single Apogee can extend reliable coverage across up to 20 acres, with up to 90% less infrastructure.

– Fewer access points, immediate ROI. Typical deployments need 70–83% fewer access points, delivering an immediate positive return through lower upfront and ongoing costs.

– Works with what customers already own. Apogee integrates with Cisco Meraki, HPE/Juniper Networks, Ruckus and other leading access points, enhancing existing investments instead of replacing them.

– Simple to deploy, built for the future. Plug-and-play or professionally configured options, with technology designed to support evolving wireless standards.

The Apogee family includes four products, each suited to a different kind of environment:

– Apogee 180: broad directional coverage for parking lots, loading docks, warehouses and outdoor venues.
– Apogee 180 MP: reliable Wi-Fi in harsh environments where signals bounce off metal, such as industrial facilities and dense warehouses.
– Apogee 360: our flagship antenna, configurable in 90, 180, 270, and 360 degrees, commonly deployed on campuses, rail yards and intermodals, farms, and other large open areas.
– Apogee Converge: the world’s first software-defined antenna platform to support both Wi-Fi and private LTE (CBRS) in a single array.

Because Apogee works alongside existing access points rather than replacing them, organizations get more from the Wi-Fi they already own, with no recurring per-node licensing fee from Aura.

Apogee is deployed across big-box retail, distribution centers, air cargo hubs, intermodal freight depots, farmland, urban centers and more. Results include:

– A 750,000-square-foot warehouse with zero dead zones using four access points and four Apogee antennas, at a projected 83% lower five-year cost
– A 500,000-square-foot warehouse reduced from 32 traditional access points to 3 Apogee installations
– A municipal downtown reduced from 20 traditional access points to 6 Apogee installations
– A 1,000-acre farm covered with 5 Apogees
– A 250-acre U-Pick farm covered with 3 Apogees
– A 27-acre senior living facility covered with 3 Apogee installations
– A 200+ acre regional theme and water park with park-wide guest Wi-Fi using roughly 75–85% fewer access points than a traditional design

Because Apogee is one adaptable platform rather than a single fixed product, it multiplies the value of the billions of dollars enterprises have already invested in Wi-Fi. It makes previously cost-prohibitive deployments, from multipath-heavy indoor facilities to open outdoor sites, commercially viable for a broader set of customers.

Learn more at aurawireless.com.

Jason Claybrook
Aura Wireless
jclaybrook@aurawireless.com
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Aura Wireless Wins 2026 WBA Award for Best Wi-Fi Innovation

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