The turn of the year also marked the beginning of a new era for Wi-Fi. This is because the new 802.11ax standard - in stark contrast to the USB sector - has finally introduced marketing and user-friendly designations. The current (sixth) generation is now simply referred to as WLAN 6 in common parlance, making it much easier to communicate to customers which products already support the latest specifications and features. The first devices such as routers are already on the market, and almost all manufacturers have also presented or announced numerous other new products with the new standard for the coming weeks and months.

Even more important than the new naming scheme, however, is the technological progress, which is enormous - especially for professional users and in densely populated networks such as companies, exhibition halls, stadiums and Industry 4.0 and IoT environments. Even if new speed records did not play a major role in the development objectives, the most noticeable improvement ultimately comes down to speed, as usual. With theoretically achievable transfer rates of up to 9.6 Gbit, i.e. almost 1.2 GByte, per second, WLAN 6 is almost three times as fast as its predecessor 802.11ac (3.5 Gbit/s), which now runs under WLAN 5. Even if this value is hardly feasible even under laboratory conditions, users will still experience a noticeable acceleration in many cases.

This is mainly due to the fact that the increase in speed is achieved by combining a whole range of different innovations and improvements for various detailed areas and application scenarios of data transmission. We present these in more detail below.

'8X8-MIMO', 'OFDMA' and 'QAM-1024'

Like the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX11000, most WLAN 6 routers have eight antennas to exploit their full potential.

© Asus ROG

The most important improvements in WLAN 6 include 'MU-MIMO' (Multi User Multiple Input Multiple Output) extended to 8x8 and 'OFDMA' (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access). While the previous (maximum 4x4) MU-MIMO under WLAN 5 only optimized the data throughput in the downlink through the intelligent and demand-oriented distribution of the bandwidth, the new generation now also includes the uplink. This is important because upload volumes and sizes are also constantly increasing due to high-resolution images and videos and other large files. At the same time, the maximum number of channels per access point has been doubled to eight. This means that up to eight devices can be supplied simultaneously with dedicated and bidirectional channels. If not all channels are needed, routers and access points can bundle the free channels with occupied channels as required. However, in order to take advantage of these benefits, WLAN 6-capable clients as well as routers and access points with a corresponding number of antennas are essential.

While 8x8 MIMO is primarily concerned with large data volumes and maximizing the number of connections, OFDMA is more about increasing efficiency with many small data packets. To this end, OFDM technology is being expanded to include some important improvements that are already known from LTE. Instead of completely reserving a separate frequency range with a width of 20, 40 or 80 MHz for each packet per time unit, as was previously the case, it is now possible to subdivide into so-called resource units (RU) with a minimum size of 2 MHz, several of which can be used in parallel and also bundled. This means that significantly more information can be packed into the frequency block, drastically increasing data throughput, especially for large quantities of small data packets. A typical example of this would be many chats running simultaneously. WLAN 6 also offers the option of channels with a bandwidth of 160 MHz and can also send data packets to several recipients at the same time without having to use twice the resources.

These efficiency boosters are further enhanced - at least over short distances - by the move to 'QAM-1024' (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation). This quadruples the number of symbols used for modulation and simultaneously increases the number of bits per symbol from eight to ten. Overall, this should enable an increase in speed of up to 50 percent over short distances and with an undisturbed signal path.

Less energy, more safety

Netgear hides the antennas of its 'Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream' in a futuristic design

© Netgear

The better utilization of the frequency spectrum itself provides a further boost in speed and efficiency. While WLAN 5 was primarily designed for the 5 GHz band and had to be downgraded to WLAN 4 or 3 in order to use the 2.4 GHz band, WLAN 6 can use both bands equally and with the full overall bandwidth of currently 538.5 MHz. In addition, the new standard is already prepared for an expansion of the frequency spectrum between 1 and 7 GHz, which will be inevitable sooner or later. Both the USA and Europe are already considering opening up the 6 GHz band for WLAN. Depending on the frequencies included, this would mean a doubling to quadrupling of the available bandwidth.

Despite this significant increase in efficiency in all key areas, WLAN 6 is also more energy-efficient than its predecessor. This is due in particular to the new 'Target Wakeup Time' (TWT). This allows the access points to negotiate individually and independently with the clients at what intervals they wake up and search for a connection. This reduces battery consumption considerably in some cases. This is particularly beneficial for clients in IoT and Industry 4.0 environments, which are predominantly passive anyway and often only need to send their status messages every few minutes, hours or even days and ask for new commands instead of constantly listening. TWT also helps to extend the battery life of smartphones and notebooks, at least in idle mode.

The new Wi-Fi standard also sets a new benchmark in terms of security with the mandatory WPA3 encryption. Other advantages include a greater range and lower latency.

For whom the switch to WLAN 6 is worthwhile

© Intel

While it is of little benefit in a private environment, the increase in speed in a professional environment is particularly important for the connection between the access points and with the router. While the upper limit for the link rate with 11ac/WLAN 5 was still just under 1,000 Mbit per second and with the improved Wave 2 around 1,700, WLAN 6 now achieves three times this, and with a full eight antennas almost six times. However, in order to use these speeds efficiently, distribute and process the numerous data streams and connect four times as many clients, the new routers and access points also need correspondingly powerful hardware equipment that goes beyond faster radio modules. For example, four- and even eight-core CPUs are now being used in routers. To avoid bottlenecks at the transition to Ethernet, fast LAN ports are also mandatory, some of which can be bundled for further acceleration.

However, this also makes the devices a good deal more expensive than their predecessors. Another reason why sales opportunities are limited to the business sector for the time being. Companies that want to enter the new WLAN world can also do so gradually and initially use the technology at neuralgic points where their current solutions are overwhelmed. In principle, WLAN 6 is largely downward compatible, but in order to really take advantage of it, the clients must also be 11ax-capable if possible. Theoretically, there is still some potential for optimization with WLAN 5, for example by doubling the channel bandwidth to 160 MHz. However, now that the significantly better successor is already on the market, manufacturers will certainly not invest too much effort here.

Ultimately, the enormous increase in speed was never the actual goal of WLAN 6, but is simply the result of all these various improvements, which are primarily intended for densely populated WLAN networks including IoT and Industry 4.0. It is precisely in these environments that it is most worthwhile for specialist retailers to suggest that their customers switch to WLAN 6 as soon as possible. For home users, the purchase is mainly worthwhile if they either want to integrate a large number of devices into their network or if several users often require large amounts of data at the same time, for example through video streams.