It’s been twenty years since the first WiFi standard was approved. I remember how great it felt about fifteen years ago when Verizon gave me a WiFi modem as part of my new FiOS service. Up until then my computing had always been tied to cables and it was so freeing to use a laptop anywhere in the house (although that first generation WiFi didn’t do a great job of penetrating the plaster walls in my old house).
Here are some of the improvements being considered:
802.11ax. The goal of this next-gen WiFi is to enable speeds up to 10 Gbps using the 5 GHz band of free WiFi spectrum. The standard also seeks to provide more bandwidth in the 2.4 GHz band. The developing new standard is looking at the use of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), multi-user MIMO and other technology improvements to squeeze more bandwidth out of the currently available WiFi frequency.
Interestingly, this standard only calls for an improvement of about 37% over today’s 802.11ac technology, but the various improvement in the way the spectrum is used will hopefully mean about a four times greater delivery of bandwidth.
Probably the biggest improvement with this standard is the ability to connect efficiently to a greater number of devices. At first this will make 802.11ax WiFi more useful in crowded environments like stadiums and other public places. But the real benefit is to make WiFi the go-to spectrum for use for the Internet of Things. There is a huge race going on between WiFi and cellular technologies to grab the majority of that exploding market. For now, for indoor uses WiFi has the lead and most IoT devices today are WiFi connected. But today’s WiFi networks can get bogged down when there are too many simultaneous requests for connections. We’ll have to wait to see if the changes to the standards improve WiFi enough to keep in ahead in the IoT race.
Of course, the 10 GHz speed is somewhat theoretical in it would provide all of the bandwidth to one device that was located close the transmitter – but the overall improvement in bandwidth promises to be dramatic. This new standard is expected to be finalized by 2019, but there will probably be new hardware that incorporates some of the planned upgrades by 2018.
802.11ay. 802.11ay is the successor to 802.11ad, which never got any market traction. These two standards utilize the 60 GHz spectrum and are intended to deliver big amounts of bandwidth for short distances, such as inside a room. This new standard promises to improve short-range bandwidth up to 20 Gbps, about a three times improvement over 802.11ad. The new standard might have the same market acceptance issues if most users are satisfied instead with 802.11ax. The primary improvements over 802.11ad are the addition of MIMO antennas with up to four simultaneous data streams.
802.11az. The earlier two improvements discussed above are aimed at improving bandwidth to WiFi users. The 802.11az standard instead looks at ways to improve the location and positioning of users on a WiFi network. Since many of the improvements in WiFi use MIMO (multiple input multiple output) antennas, system performance is improved significantly if the WiFi router can accurately and quickly keep track of the precise location of each user on the WiFi network. That’s a relatively simple task in a static environment of talking to fixed-location devices like a TV or appliances, but much harder to do with mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, etc. Improvements in locating technology allows a WiFi network to more quickly track and connect to a device without having to waste frequency resources to first find the device before each transmission.
The other big improvement promised by this standard is increased energy efficiency of the network. As the network becomes adroit at identifying and remembering the location of network devices, the standard allows for WiFi devices to shut down and go to sleep and drop off the network when not in use, saving energy for devices like IoT sensors. The WiFi hub and sensor devices can be ‘scheduled’ to connect at fixed times allowing for devices to save power by sleeping in between connections.
These changes are necessary to keep WiFi useful and relevant. The number of devices that are going to be connected to WiFi is expected to continue to grow at exponential rates, and today’s WiFi can bog down under heavy use, as anybody who tries to use WiFi in a business hotel understands. But a lot of the problems with today’s WiFi can be fixed with the combination of faster data throughput along with tweaks that reduce the problems caused by interference among devices trying to gain the attention of the hug modem. The various improvements planned by the IEEE Working Group are addressing all of these issues.