Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 to launch in Q3 2019

The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced that the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6, a certification program to ensure that devices with 802.11ax meet industry-grade standards for interoperability and security, will launch in Q3 2019.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 includes the following capabilities:

• 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

“Wi-Fi continues to be a predominant technology for accessing the internet, with a strong history of success,” said Andrew Zignani, Senior Research Analyst, ABI Research. “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 will further escalate Wi-Fi’s role, with more than one billion Wi-Fi 6 chipsets expected to be shipped annually in 2022.”

Wi-Fi 6 powered products have already surfaced during the CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada, which were seen in Internet of Things (IoT) devices. For more information about Wi-Fi 6, you can read our article here.

Source: Wi-Fi Alliance