Wi-Fi 6 Standards

- The New Wireless Standard - 802.11ax

The Wi-Fi Alliance is the organization in charge of deciding, developing, and designating Wi-Fi standards. As devices become more complex and internet connections evolve, the process of delivering wireless connections also changes. That means that Wi-Fi standards - the technical specifications that manufacturers use to create Wi-Fi - need to be periodically updated so that new technology can flourish and everything can remain compatible.

Wi-Fi 6 is a new wireless standard. Also called 802.11ax. Wi-Fi 6 is opening up new possibilities for wireless. Improved speed, capacity, and control will not only support existing applications with greater performance and improved experiences but also drive new innovations that will change the way people work. In order to take advantage of all of the benefits of Wi-Fi 6, you will need a Wi-Fi 6-capable network. This includes both access points and Wi-Fi 6 clients. 

Wi-Fi 6 is an upgrade on the current highest-speed Wi-Fi protocol in wide use, 802.11ac. Wi-Fi 6 brings a dramatic improvement in efficiency across all existing Wi-Fi bands, including older 2.4GHz frequencies. Wi-Fi 6 will also likely get new spectrum in the 6GHz band in 2019 or 2020, further improving its speed. The biggest improvement that comes with Wi-Fi 6 is that it increases the density of devices that can co-exist in a single space, further increasing the speed of all devices when there is more than one. 

The new standard also improves performance by supporting deterministic (that is, not random) packet scheduling, which, as well as increasing the efficiency of the use of any given band, also makes for dramatic improvements in power utilization by mobile devices. Wi-Fi 6 will eventually improve the experience for almost all wireless users, from office workers, who will find that their devices communicate more reliably and quickly in crowded offices, to people supporting constellations of IoT devices, who will find that they can pack more low-power devices into a space with fewer access points. The reliably deterministic nature of Wi-Fi 6, combined with its speed, means it should be usable for life-safety applications, including things like remote surgery devices.  

- OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-division Multiple Access)

OFDMA is a magical feature in the 802.11ax standard. OFDMA is a type of frequency-division multiplexing that is able to use subcarriers more efficiently when it comes to transporting data. Previously, when using OFDM, each user got one time slot, or a whole bandwidth channel. Each user needed to wait in line before they were able to deliver their packet. As more clients join, it took longer for packets to be delivered, resulting in lag time and people waiting to transport data. OFDMA provides a more regular and consistent packet delivery and users don’t have to wait as long. Here’s another way to put it. With OFDM, any time a user would request a data packet, it would essentially send out one truck to meet each request of each user, which isn’t very efficient. OFDMA is different, as one truck is used to deliver the packet to individual users in one round. This way is far more efficient and takes less time. 

- Wi-Fi 6E: Unlicensed Operation in the 6 GHz Band

The Wi-Fi Alliance is introducing a new terminology to distinguish upcoming Wi-Fi 6 devices that are capable of 6 GHz operation - Wi-Fi 6E. This is essentially the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 / 802.11ax (higher performance in terms of faster data rates as well as lower latency) in the 6 GHz band. 6 GHz addresses Wi-Fi spectrum shortage by providing contiguous spectrum blocks to accommodate up to 14 additional 80 MHz channels and 7 additional 160 MHz channels. Wi-Fi 6E devices can make use of the wider channels and additional capacity to provide better performance and support denser deployments.

Once 6 GHz is made available by regulators, analysts predict the first Wi-Fi devices to use the band will include Wi-Fi 6E consumer access points and smartphones, followed by enterprise-grade access points. Industrial environments are also expected to see strong adoption from Wi-Fi 6E to deliver applications including machine analytics, remote maintenance, or virtual employee training. Wi-Fi 6E will utilize 6 GHz to deliver much anticipated augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) use cases for consumer, enterprise, and industrial environments.

- Wi-Fi 7

Successful technologies evolve continuously – the evolution never stops. The more successful the technology, the greater the need to keep improving the user experience. Wi-Fi is one of the most successful wireless technologies. And with success comes the need to innovate.

When compared to Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7 (or 802.11be) will also use multi-band/multi-channel aggregation and operation and deliver higher spectrum and power efficiency, better interference mitigations, higher capacity density and higher cost efficiency. The seventh generation of Wi-Fi is also referred to as Wi-Fi Extremely High Throughput as result of its projected ability to support up to 30Gbps throughput, roughly three times faster than Wi-Fi 6.  

There are a number of proposed features for the Wi-Fi 7 standard, but direct enhancements over Wi-Fi 6 include support of 320 MHz transmissions, which is double the 160 MHz of 802.11ax, the use of higher modulation orders, optionally supporting 4096-QAM — up from 1024-QAM in 802.11ax — and the allocation of multiple resource units, such as groups of OFMDA tones.