Wi-Fi Certified 6 certification program has been officially launched by The Wi-Fi Alliance, promising higher wireless speeds, reduced latency, improved battery life, and less network congestion.
In a report by PCMag, Wi-Fi 6 which will also be referred to as 802.11ax will boast four-times the capacity of its predecessor Wi-Fi 5, perfect for home users and public venues where wireless is being offered.
Among the key features of Wi-Fi 6 is the Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) which shares channels for increased network efficiency and lower latency, Multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) which allows more devices to be connected and more data to be transferred at once, and 160MHz channels that allow for greater bandwidth.
Target wake time (TWT) will also be available for improved battery life for connected devices such as IoT devices. Transmit beamforming will also increase data rates at any range, and 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation mode (1024-QAM) will increase Wi-Fi device throughput, allowing more data to be encoded in the same amount of spectrum.
Wi-Fi Alliance president and CEO Edgar Figueroa said: “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 is ushering in a new era of Wi-Fi, building on Wi-Fi’s core characteristics to provide better performance in every environment for users, greater network capacity for service providers to improve coverage for their customers, and new opportunities for advanced applications.”
“Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 will deliver improvements in connectivity, including in high density locations and IoT environments,” Figueroa added.
Wi-Fi 6-compatible hardware has been available for several months now and devices which can take full advantage of the Wi-Fi 6 include the newest smartphones such as iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro.
(Photo source: 9to5mac.com/ pcmag.com)
