The Wi-Fi Alliance has unveiled its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 certification program designed to enable “the best user experience with devices based on IEEE 802.11ax.”
According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, the certification offers new features and capabilities which are designed to provide improved Wi-Fi network performance in stadiums, airports, industrial parks and other locations where there a large number of active Wi-Fi devices, making connections challenging.
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6, with nearly four times the capacity of Wi-Fi 5, supports a more diverse set of devices and applications than the previous generation Wi-Fi 5, including devices requiring low power and low latency such as smart home devices, as well as devices that need peak performance in demanding enterprise environments.
“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,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance, in a prepared statement. “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 will deliver improvements in connectivity, including in high density locations and IoT environments.”
Among the advanced capabilities available in Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 are:
- Multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO), which provides for more downlink data to be transferred simultaneously and enables an access point to concurrently transmit data to a larger number of devices
- Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), which effectively shares channels to increase network efficiency and lower latency for both uplink and downlink traffic in high demand environments
- Target wake time (TWT): significantly improves battery life in Wi-Fi devices, such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices
“Wi-Fi 6 brings greater speeds and more efficiency to Wi-Fi networks, expanding its role as a critical communication platform,” said Phil Solis, research director at IDC, in a prepared statement. “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 drives a higher quality experience for all Wi-Fi’s many use cases, further propelling the Wi-Fi market and ensuring Wi-Fi maintains its strong position as the connectivity landscape evolves.”
