Wi-fi 6 and 6E: Faster, Bigger, Smarter, and Even More Indispensable

The Wi-Fi Alliance has launched two new versions of Wi-Fi that deliver significant advancements in performance, efficiency, latency, and other key areas: Wi-Fi 6 and 6E. These two new versions of the technology represent major leaps forward in Wi-Fi that make it an even stronger foundation for consumer smart devices, IoT networks, and a wide range of enterprise and industrial use cases.

News of the new versions of Wi-Fi was rightfully met with excitement from industry experts. This article is written by a respected industry analyst who equates the significance of this Wi-Fi upgrade to the leap that cellular technology is making from 4G to 5G. And this article published by Network World reports that the adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E will be rapid and widespread because the enhancements are so compelling.

This is a major new technology upgrade for engineering teams that design wirelessly-connected products, and it will reshape the pipeline of design projects that engineers work on in the coming months and years. The advancements in Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are significant, enabling the technology to support existing applications more effectively while also making it possible to support new use cases that were previously difficult or impossible using Wi-Fi connectivity. The key advancements include:

• Greatly-increased performance in terms of both throughput and device density
• Significantly-increased spectrum that gives engineers more flexibility, reliability, and performance
• Much higher efficiency that extends battery life and enables device networks to perform at higher levels
• Far lower latency that makes Wi-Fi networks a strong complement to other low-latency technologies like 5G
• And other technical advancements that support new applications in consumer, enterprise, and industrial use cases

This side-by-side comparison of the key specifications and performance metrics of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E compared to earlier versions underscore how significant the leap is. The first thing that is likely to jump off the page is the massive increase in data throughput. This is not an incremental bump.

To illustrate that, the article cited above by industry analyst Jeff Kagan reports that testing organizations have achieved increases in download speeds of 1,000 percent. This is a game changer for Wi-Fi as a connectivity platform that allows it to support data-intensive use cases such as HD video distribution, advanced factory and building automation applications, large-scale outdoor IoT networks, warehouse logistics applications, and more.