In today’s internet frenzy, Wi-Fi connectivity has become a major component of our daily lives. We rely on the networks, so expect them to be speedy and accommodate a large number of devices — be it laptops, mobiles or IoT devices. But, the Wi-Fi network might sometimes get clogged up when too many devices are connected to the network. Thus, Qualcomm has today announced a new 802.11ax Wi-Fi protocol to solve the said problem.
There has been previously been an immense focus on increasing the connectivity speed of networks, but Qualcomm is now focusing on the capacity of these networks. The focus of the chipmaker has shifted to capacity as we’re connecting more devices to a network and handling the increased traffic is an absolute necessity. The widely popular 802.11ac wi-fi protocol has already been complemented by 802.11ad in the 60GHz band. But, today’s release will append Wi-Fi protocols in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands.
Talking about today’s advancements, Rahul Patel, Senior VP & GM (connectivity) at Qualcomm Technologies Inc, says,
CAPACITY — not peak speed — has become the most important measure of a network’s ability to handle the ever-increasing demands of today’s diverse mix of application and services.
Also, commenting on this bottleneck, Anand Oswal, Senior VP(enterprise networking group) at Cisco, says,
Wi-Fi is now an essential element of every corporate, education, service provider and public network. IT executives are reporting their biggest challenges are capacity and scalability, given the enormous growth of users.
With regards to the same, the chipmaker has announced an end-to-end 802.11ax portfolio which includes two system-on-a-chips (SoCs). It includes the IPQ8074 chip for network infrastructure and QCA6290 for client devices. The said chips are designed to better the connected experience by providing four times the currently available capacity and user throughput. This means it is four times faster than the previous standard. It is backward compatible with existing wireless technologies.
As for technical specifications of 802.11ax solutions, the SoCs “support 12-streams (eight 5GHz and four 2.4GHz), 8×8 MU-MIMO, 80 MHz channels.” It includes additional features and proven cellular techniques like Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and traffic scheduling. This provides greater efficiency and higher user throughput, along with wake-up time optimizations which reduce power consumption by two-thirds.
Further, talking about the technical improvements, Rahul adds,
We were the first to commercialize capacity utilization-focused solutions, such as MU-MIMO, Wi-Fi SON and 802.11ad, and are now on the front lines of 11ax innovation that will propel the Wi-Fi industry into the next phase of high-capacity, high-efficiency networks.
As for availability, devices with either of the two – IPQ8074 and QCA6290 system-on-chips (SoCs) are expected to be shipped in the first half of 2017. Once adopted widely, this will further improve the networks at public parks, schools, and airports and other crowded locations that require a capacity-intensive and efficient wireless network. For those interested in reading up on the specification of each chip, click here to access the presentation.
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