Wi-Fi 6: the features and compatible devices

The new Wi-Fi 6 standard provides faster connection speeds and lower latency. Compatible devices will arrive in 2020

On September 16, the Wi-Fi Alliance officially kicked off the certification program for products compatible with the new Wi-Fi 6 standard. Thus begins the era of this new, ultra-fast connection for non-cellular wireless networks, and there are already the first certified devices.

These products will be easily identifiable by the logo "Wi-FI 6 CERTIFIED", which will be accompanied by the second logo "Wi-FI CERTIFIED WPA3" that indicates that the device uses the latest encryption standards, provided by the WPA3 protocol. The devices that will show these two logos will be fully compatible with all the technical innovations introduced by the new standard and, above all, will bring the user a long list of advantages over previous Wi-Fi 5 devices. Some of them are already on the market, while others are obtaining certification and will soon be put on the market. By the first months of 2020, therefore, the offer of Wi-Fi 6 certified products should already be quite substantial.

Wi-Fi 6: technical characteristics

The list of technical innovations of Wi-Fi 6, compared to what was already provided by the Wi-Fi 5 standard, is really long. Tra le principali caratteristiche del nuovo standard citiamo la divisione delle frequenze ortogonale con accesso multiplo (OFDMA), che condivide i canali per aumentare l’efficienza della rete e ridurre la latenza, il Multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO), che permette ad un access point di trasmettere dati a un numero maggiore di dispositivi contemporaneamente, l’uso dei nuovi canali a 160 MHz, che permettono una banda dati maggiore e una latenza inferiore, il Target wake time (TWT), che aumenta la durata delle batterie dei dispositivi, la tecnologia 1024-QAM che aumenta la banda del Wi-Fi trasmettendo più dati nello stesso spettro di frequenze e, infine, il Transmit beamforming, che consente velocità dati più elevate in un determinato intervallo di frequenze.

Wi-Fi 6: dispositivi compatibili

I primi due dispositivi compatibili con lo standard Wi-Fi 6 sono:

  • lo smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 10
  • l’access point Ruckus R750.

A breve arriveranno:

  • i chip per modem router Broadcom BCM4375, BCM43698 e BCM43684,
  • il chip Cypress CYW 89650,
  • i processori Intel AX200 (per i PC) e WAV600 (per i router),
  • i SoC della famiglia Marvell 88W9064 e 88W9068,
  • Qualcomm Networking Pro 1200
  • Fastconnect 6800.