Understanding Wi-Fi 6

[AMPK]

 What is Wi-Fi 6 Most of us would have probably heard terms like Wi-Fi 802.11n & Wi-Fi 802.11ac. Until recently, the Wi-Fi generations were represented using this naming scheme. But it was difficult to easily identify which of them is newer and latest just by looking at the name. To fix this problem, the Wi-Fi Alliance started using a numerical naming scheme for Wi-Fi generations. Here's a look at some of the newer Wi-Fi generations and their names in both naming schemes. 

* Wi-Fi 4 is 802.11n, released in 2009. 

* Wi-Fi 5 is 802.11ac, released in 2014.  

* Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 802.11ax is the latest generation of Wi-Fi standards.

 It comes with several improvements over the previous generation Wi-Fi 802.11 ac or the Wi-Fi 5.

 What makes Wi-Fi 6 better over the previous generations? Let's take a look.

 Faster Wi-Fi :

Wi-Fi 6 offers a theoretical maximum speed of 9.6 Gbps, compared to 3.5 Gbps on Wi-Fi 5. The higher speed is achieved through more efficient data encoding, mainly by packing more data into the same radio waves resulting in much higher throughput.

 The theoretical maximum speeds are probably not going to be achieved on your device in real-life usage right? But the much higher speed also means that it can be split across multiple devices, which means you can get faster connections across each device that is connected to the same Wi-Fi network. 

 Battling Congestion:

 In fact, more than increasing the speed on a single device, Wi-Fi 6 is about improving the network when a bunch of devices is connected. The average number of devices using Wi-Fi is rapidly increasing these days. As the number of devices increases, the network tends to slow down.

 Wi-Fi 6 incorporates some new technologies to overcome this issue and bring great improvements to the Wi-Fi connection in crowded areas where numerous Wi-Fi enabled devices are present. 

 Improved MU-MIMO technology

 MU-MIMO enables a device or router to communicate with multiple devices at the same. WiFi 6 upgrades the existing MU-MIMO by allowing connections up to 8 devices simultaneously compared to 4 in the previous generation. Using MU-MIMO on Wi-Fi 5, the access point could only talk to multiple devices but those devices couldn’t respond at the same time. Wi-Fi 6 lets devices to respond at the same time.

 Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access Using OFDMA, Wi-Fi 6 divides a wireless channel into a large number of subchannels. Each of these subchannels can carry data intended for a different device. This means that one transmission signal can deliver data to multiple devices at once. 

 Better Security:

 Currently, the WPA2 protocol is commonly being used to secure Wi-Fi networks. A new security protocol called WPA3 was recently introduced. 

 WPA3 makes it harder for hackers to crack passwords by constantly guessing them, and it makes some data less useful even if hackers manage to obtain it. Being said that current devices can support WPA3, it is just optional. But Wi-Fi 6 makes it necessary to support WPA3 to get certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. 

 Better Battery:

 Life A new 'Target Wake Time' (TWT) feature of Wi-Fi 6 helps to reduce the amount of time their antennas need to be powered on to transmit and search for signals. This is done by enabling devices to plan out communications with a router. The access point can tell a device exactly when to put its Wi-Fi radio to sleep and exactly when to wake it up to receive the next transmission. This saves battery as the Wi-Fi radio can spend more time in the sleep-mode. This can be very helpful to get longer battery life on your devices, especially for low-power IoT devices.

 Wi-Fi 6: 

The future of connectivity Any drawbacks that we currently face with Wi-Fi 6 are more related to the fact that it is still a very new technology that is only starting to become common. Some of the current drawbacks are: Devices including routers and gadgets that support Wi-Fi 6 are comparatively more expensive and relatively less in number as of now.

 Many of the improvements of WI-Fi 6 including the benefits from improved MU-MIMO technology and OFDMA can be experienced at it's best only once more devices start to make use of this. 

 On the good side of things, Wi-Fi 6 provides many much-needed improvements that are definitely necessary these days. Wi-Fi 6 implementation will become more and more common in the future. The real benefits of Wi-Fi 6 will be clearly evident once more devices switch to Wi-Fi 6.