Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6™ will be available in the third quarter of 2019
The Wi-Fi Alliance has launched a device certification program to support the Wi-Fi 6 standard, which is expected to begin in the third quarter of this year. The program is for devices based on IEEE 802.11ax technology. The Wi-Fi Alliance designated the technology as Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 in October last year to simplify the naming scheme for different generations of Wi-Fi technology and make it easier for consumers to accept and understand.
Advanced capabilities supported by Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 bring innovation for Wi-Fi to excel even in diverse Wi-Fi environments with many devices. Key benefits include higher data rates, increased network capacity, improved performance in congested environments, and improved power efficiency. These capabilities include:
- Uplink and downlink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA): increases network efficiency and lowers latency for high demand environments
- Multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO): allows more data to be transferred at once and enables an access point to transmit to a larger number of concurrent clients at once
- Transmit beamforming: enables higher data rates at a given range resulting in greater network capacity
- 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation mode (1024-QAM): increases throughput in Wi-Fi devices by encoding more data in the same amount of spectrum
- Target wake time (TWT): significantly improves battery life in Wi-Fi devices, such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices
It is understood that companies including Ruckus, Huawei, EnGenius, Charter, NEC, H3C, Calix, KT and Netgear have announced that they will provide related products and equipment based on Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi 6 technology network platform.
