The Wi-Fi Alliance is expanding the ac Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ standard to include new features that provide a better-performance mobility experience. New “wave 2” features enable Wi-Fi to more efficiently handle high-bandwidth applications for an increasing number of smartphones, tablets, TVs, and other consumer electronics devices simultaneously connected to Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac delivers greater network capacity and multi-gigabit speeds to benefit consumers, service providers, and enterprises.
Multi-user Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) is among the most anticipated new features of the new ac standard, allowing more devices to operate simultaneously on the same network without sacrificing speed or performance. In addition to increased network capacity enabled with MU-MIMO, devices supporting the full set of new features are capable of achieving up to three times the speed of devices supporting only original Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac features.
The new features include:
- MU-MIMO: Networks with MU-MIMO are capable of multitasking by sending data to multiple devices at once rather than one-at-a-time, improving overall network efficiency and throughput
- 160 MHz channels: Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac increases the maximum channel bandwidth from 80 MHz channels to 160 MHz channels, potentially doubling transmission speeds
- Four spatial streams: Device speeds are proportional to the number of spatial streams. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac now includes support for four spatial streams, up from three spatial streams.
- Extended 5 GHz channel support: Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac encourages device support for a greater number of available channels in 5 GHz. Support for additional channels makes more efficient use of available spectrum and reduces interference and congestion by minimizing the number of networks operating on overlapping channels.
Andrew Zignani, research analyst, ABI Research said - Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac gives users a greater experience in dense environments by maximizing Wi-Fi network resources, providing a richer set of features, and enabling the full potential of the technology. Wi-Fi Alliance assists in the proliferation of certified products into the market, and they expect an increasing number of data-intensive devices to support these new features for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac that will benefit device end users through this certification process.
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac was the first version of Wi-Fi to break the gigabit barrier, accelerating the shift to greater utilization of the 5 GHz band. Now, more than 65 percent of devices are dual-band, operating in both 2.4 and 5 GHz. This Wi-Fi CERTIFIED interoperability certification program will increase product support for newly supported features from a wide variety of mobile devices and access points, and 96 percent of devices will be dual-band by 2020. Access points supporting new features are expected to dominate the market within the next five years.
The first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac products to support new features and which comprise the test bed for interoperability certification are:
- Broadcom BCM94709R4366AC
- Marvell Avastar 88W8964
- MediaTek MT7615 AP Reference Design and MT6632 STA Reference Design
- Qualcomm IPQ8065 802.11ac 4-stream Dual-band, Dual-concurrent Router
- Quantenna QSR1000 4x4 802.11ac Wave 2 Chipset Family
