With the increasing popularity of Smart devices, nowadays it is increasingly important to have a solid connection; that’s why, in mid-2019, Wi-Fi 6 will appear. The latter will lead to a real revolution and will be of fundamental importance in the development of IoT devices. So let’s see how it works and why Wi-Fi 6 is a revolution.
Index
What is Wi-Fi 6
Wi-Fi 6 is the new standard introduced by scientists of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), which will appear in the first half of 2019. The latter is actually the new name given by the IEEE to the 802.11 standard ax. In addition to renaming this standard, the scientists also renamed the previous 802.11 and 802.11 ac standards, which became Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 respectively. This renaming was made to simplify users’ lives; in fact, in this way it is easier to understand what is the latest technology and the speed of their devices.
How Wi-Fi 6 works
Compared to the old standards, Wi-Fi 6 can achieve much better results thanks to several factors; among these we can find an expansion of the band available to individual Wi-Fi channels, which doubles from 80 to 160 megahertz, so that each channel can be used exclusively by a single device. In addition, the management of MIMO (Multiple-in Multiple-out) antennas has been improved, now capable of simultaneously managing multiple incoming and outgoing data streams. Through these improvements, the router is able to manage the flows of data packets arriving from different devices in a faster and more efficient way, without giving rise to “traffic jams”.
Advantages of Wi-Fi 6
The advantages offered by Wi-Fi 6, compared to its predecessors, are remarkable. Through the latter there will be a significant increase in connection speed combined with a decrease in energy consumption, so as to have greater autonomy on various connected devices, such as PCs, smartphones and smartwatches. Let’s take a closer look at the main features and advantages of Wi-Fi 6:
- Greater speed: what will surely make users happy is the connection speed. In fact, according to the first experimental data, Wi-Fi 6 is 40% faster than the previous standard. The transfer of data between routers and devices will be able to reach speeds of up to 2 gigabits per second; this is possible through a different encoding and a different encapsulation of the data packets, which will optimize the occupation of the radio band and therefore allow more data to be passed than in the past;
- Better coverage in crowded areas: on average, the wireless band usually saturates very quickly when several devices are connected at the same access point at the same time; this is a symptom of a very fast degradation of the quality of the signal which leads to a slowing down of the connection. Wi-Fi 6, on the other hand, ensures better management and organization of data flows through the use of communication channels dedicated to each connected device. In this way, bottlenecks will not be created that prevent the devices from navigating to the maximum allowed connection speed;
- Reduction of energy consumption: the 802.11 ax standard, or Wi-Fi 6, through a new wake time target algorithm, is able to reduce energy consumption due to the transfer of data packets. This technology is able to communicate to the device connected to the network, such as a smartphone or tablet, when it must turn on or off the Wi-Fi chip, so as to avoid unnecessary waste of energy.