Wifi6. Is It Time To Upgrade Right Now Or Can We Wait?
IEEE 802.11ax, marketed as Wi-Fi 6 by Wi-Fi Alliance,[1][2] is a draft Wi-Fi specification standard, and the proposed successor to Wi-Fi 5.[3] The 802.11ax standard is expected to become an official IEEE specification in September 2020.[4] It is designed to operate in license exempt bands between 1 and 6 GHz when they become available for 802.11 use. All Wi-Fi 6 devices work over the previously allocated 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. The Wi-Fi 6E extended designation is for products that also support the higher than 6 GHz standard.[5]
Devices presented at CES 2018 claimed a combined 11 Gbit/s of theoretical data rates.[6] For dense deployments, throughput speeds are 4× higher than IEEE 802.11ac, even though the nominal data rate is just 37% faster at most. Latency is also down 75%.[7]
To improve spectrum efficient utilization, the new version introduces better power-control methods to avoid interference with neighboring networks, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), higher order 1024-QAM, and up-link direction added with the down-link of MIMO and MU-MIMO to further increase throughput, as well as dependability improvements of power consumption and security protocols such as Target Wake Time and WPA3.
Technical improvements
The 802.11ax amendment will bring several key improvements over 802.11ac. 802.11ax addresses frequency bands between 1 GHz and 6 GHz.[8] Therefore, unlike 802.11ac, 802.11ax will also operate in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band. To meet the goal of supporting dense 802.11 deployments, the following features have been approved.
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