Wi-Fi Alliance Announces Wi-Fi 6E Moniker for 802.11ax in the 6 GHz Spectrum
The FCC has been considering the opening up of the 6 GHz band (essentially, the 1.2 GHz unlicensed spectrum span just above the currently used 5 GHz band) for unlicensed operation. Wideband unlicensed channels of 160 MHz and more may become essential to achieve expected performance from 802.11ax, 802.11be, 4G LTE, and 5G NR in unlicensed spectrum. Opening up a continuous 1200 MHz chunk will enable substantial amount of new bandwidth over multiple wide bandwidth channels.
Unfortunately, even though there are no currently unlicensed users of the 6 GHz band, certain fixed wireless point-to-point long-range deployments are licensed to utilize it. Wi-Fi platform vendors such as Qualcomm and Broadcom have been confident of working with those users to prevent any interference. Their key message to the licensed incumbents is that any Wi-Fi deployment in the 6 GHz band would use LPI (low-power indoor) operation and can also implement AFC (automated frequency coordination). LPI operation, for example, may impose restrictions on the total EIRP (effective isotropically radiated power) and PSD (power spectral density) for Wi-Fi devices. This will prevent interference due to low power levels and substantial building losses. In addition, most licensed users of the spectrum have their point-to-point endpoints well above the ground (mounted atop towers and buildings), and devices rated for LPI operation are not likely to affect them. AFC involves the maintenance of a database where licensed users are tracked based on their deployment location, and any unlicensed Wi-Fi usage in that spectrum capable of interfering with the licensed users could automatically shift to a different channel.
The Wi-Fi Alliance is introducing a new terminology to distinguish upcoming Wi-Fi 6 devices that are capable of 6 GHz operation - Wi-Fi 6E. This is essentially the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 / 802.11ax (higher performance in terms of faster data rates as well as lower latency) in the 6 GHz band. Wi-Fi 6E devices are expected to make it to the market relatively quickly after regulatory approval, as it only requires changing the antenna tuning / RF front end on existing devices.
802.11be is likely to become Wi-Fi 7 and also operate in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands.
In retrospect, the new Wi-Fi naming scheme is not that bad. Or at least, it's not as bad as USB yet.
Previously: Wi-Fi Alliance Rebrands Wi-Fi Standards
Related: Netgear Introduces its First Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) Routers
Intel Launches a Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) Wireless Network Adapter
Related Stories
Wi-Fi Alliance rebrands 802.11ac as Wi-Fi 5, picks 802.11ax as Wi-Fi 6
The Wi-Fi Alliance today announced a significant rebranding of the "802.11" Wi-Fi standards that have long served as a source of potential confusion for users: Going forward, the current 802.11ac standard will be known as Wi-Fi 5, while its successor 802.11ax will be known as Wi-Fi 6, establishing a generational terminology that — like Bluetooth 3, 4, and 5 — will be easier for customers to remember and understand.
[...] Today's announcement is significant not just because of its impact on currently popular Wi-Fi standards, but also on one that's been on the fringe: 802.11ad. Also known as WiGig, 802.11ad notably depends on an extra, 60GHz millimeter wave wireless antenna to boost speeds of compatible devices in the same room as the router. A handful of routers and devices, including wireless VR adapters, have adopted 802.11ad over the past year or two.
But the announcement makes clear that the Wi-Fi Alliance sees 802.11ax, not 802.11ad, as the next stage of Wi-Fi's evolution. 802.11ax has no need for the extra antenna, instead making more efficient use of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands already used by 802.11ac — err, Wi-Fi 5. Wi-Fi 6 promises up to 11 Gbps speeds across three or more devices, with a single Wi-Fi 6 device achieving up to 5 Gbps.
In a statement to VentureBeat, the Alliance explained how Wi-Fi 6 and WiGig will coexist:
"Wi-Fi 6 and WiGig, based on 802.11ad and eventually 802.11ay, will continue to evolve in parallel and remain strong complements to one another within the Wi-Fi portfolio of technologies. We fully expect some products to integrate Wi-Fi 6 and WiGig, which will remain a distinct brand to indicate products that support 60 GHz Wi-Fi for multi-gigabit, low-latency connectivity."
Also at Ars Technica, The Verge, and Tom's Hardware.
Related: Wi-Fi Alliance Approves 802.11ah "HaLow" Standard for the 900 MHz Band
D-Link Joins Hands With Microsoft to Give 'Super Wi-Fi' a Push
Intel to Cease Shipments of Current WiGig Products, Focus on WiGig for VR
Netgear Announces Nighthawk RAX80 and RAX120 802.11ax AX6000 Routers
Netgear has announced imminent availability of their first 802.11ax router - the 8-stream Nighthawk RAX80, along with the technical details, pricing, and other information. In addition, they have also unveiled the 12-stream RAX120. While the RAX80 will be available for purchase this month, RAX120 will make it to retail in Q1 2019.
802.11ax has had an uphill adoption curve. Silicon vendors have been announcing draft-compliant chipsets since late 2016 (Quantenna - Q4 2016, Qualcomm - Q1 2017, Broadcom - Q3 2017, Marvell - Q4 2017, and Intel - Q1 2018). Device vendors were not far behind, with Asus going public about its plans to release a router (RT-AX88U) based on the Broadcom platform as early as September 2017. A year after the announcement, the RT-AX88U finally made it to retail at a $350 price point. D-Link also gave a sneak peek into their AX6000 and AX11000 routers based on the Broadcom chipset at the 2018 CES. In the meanwhile, we have had deployments of the Qualcomm chipset in the carrier gateways from KDDI and NEC in Asia, as well as enterprise access points from Huawei and Ruckus Wireless.
[...] It must be noted that the aim of 802.11ax is not to target peak data-rates, but, improve the aggregate performance over several simultaneously active clients. The OFDMA-enabled[*] simultaneous transmission to several users results in increased efficiency. Thanks to the lowered waiting time, the battery life of client devices also increases.
[*] OFDMA (orthogonal frequency-division multiple access - Wikipedia); not to be confused with OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing - Wikipedia.)
Also at The Verge.
Intel Launches Wi-Fi 6 AX200 Wireless Network Adapter
Intel has quietly launched its first Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) wireless network adapter, codenamed Cyclone Peak. The new WLAN adapter will deliver up to 2.4 Gbps network throughput when used with a compatible access point, but, like Wi-Fi 6 in general, its main advantage is that it will work better than existing adapters in RF-noisy environments where multiple Wi-Fi networks co-exist.
The Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 is a CNVi WLAN card that supports 802.11ax via 2x2 MU-MIMO antennas over the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. And never found too far from a Wi-Fi card, Intel's AX200 also supports Bluetooth 5.0.
[...] Intel's web-site says that the first Cyclone Peak wireless network adapter has been launched, so the device is available to makers of PCs. Depending on the order, the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 costs Intel's customers from $10 to $17.
One of the commenters linked to this paper about 802.11be, a generation of Extremely High Throughput (EHT) Wi-Fi technology beyond 802.11ax that could offer a maximum throughput of at least 30 Gbps.
Previously: Netgear Introduces its First Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) Routers
Related: Wi-Fi Alliance Rebrands Wi-Fi Standards
Qualcomm Announces 802.11ay Wi-Fi Chips that Can Transmit 10 Gbps Within Line-of-Sight
Intel Promises "10nm" Chips by the End of 2019, and More
The FCC ratified Wi-Fi 6E this morning (Thursday April 23):
During the Federal Communications Commission's monthly meeting today, it ratified unlicensed use of the 6GHz radio frequency spectrum in the USA. This decision opens the way for the proposed Wi-Fi 6E standard to move forward.
[...] Although the FCC was widely expected to unanimously ratify unlicensed use of 6GHz spectrum in general, the associated usage rules were less certain. Until today, the 6GHz spectrum was for licensed use only—but that doesn't mean it isn't already in use.
Licensed use of the 6GHz spectrum includes point-to-point microwave backhaul (used by commercial wireless providers), telephone and utility communication, and control links. It also includes Cable Television Relay Links—which are mobile links used by newscasters doing onsite live reporting—and radio astronomy.
The truly excellent news for Wi-Fi 6E backers—and future users—is that the FCC has ratified unlicensed use of the entire 1.2GHz spectrum for low-power indoor devices. Separating unlicensed outdoor and high-powered usage from indoor and low power allows for the maximum utility of spectrum in the most common (and most crowded) Wi-Fi environments, while preserving the utility of incumbent licensed users.
[...] With usable rules for unlicensed 6GHz spectrum use defined, we broadly expect to see Wi-Fi 6E devices beginning to become available to consumers in late 2020 or early 2021.
Previously: Wi-Fi Alliance Announces Wi-Fi 6E for Devices Operating in the 6 GHz Band
The FCC Sets a Vote for Expanding Wi-Fi into the 6GHz Band
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 07 2020, @12:46PM (1 child)
I wonder how and whether this will be followed up in other countries.
I also wonder how my laptop's wifi will fare in Europe.
And while I'm at it, I wonder how my Nexus 5 phone, and the Librem 5 or Pinephone I'm thinking of using next will fare elsewhere. And at home in Canada.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 07 2020, @01:26PM
If the router isn't Wi-Fi 6E, the laptop should behave like regular Wi-Fi 6 and the 6 GHz band will be ignored.
If you bring a Wi-Fi 6E router to Europe... bad things will happen?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 07 2020, @01:56PM (6 children)
Perhaps. However, the FCC has been, and continues to be, incredibly bad at addressing actual instances of interference. I have test equipment (and radio gear) that is very capable WRT assessing interference from near DC to up past 6 GHz; there's a shitload of it. Most of it comes from devices that either aren't FCC-certified, or claim they are, but clearly couldn't survive a proper evaluation in a "calibrated cow pasture", which is what my favorite FCC test engineer humorously calls his low-interference test location.
I have reported many devices that fail to comply; they're still for sale everywhere I look, and new ones are flowing through inventory on Amazon, etc.
As a radio guy, its pretty damned annoying.
The noise floor — the general level of RF noise — has been rising steadily since the 1970's, and the FCC simply isn't up to dealing with it. In this regard, they are the classic paper tiger. Undermanned and underfunded.
--
Avoid negativity:
f(x) = |x|
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday January 07 2020, @02:31PM
The lack of FCC giving a shit made me want to start a pirate radio station. The last person I recall getting busted was running an FM station from a storage locker for two months straight before they showed up. It's been a while but listening to the CB band with an RTL-SDR was good fun. Some guy was playing clips from people yelling in horror movies. Another guy claimed to be in the next state and his signal was far stronger than any of the locals. Must have had a kilowatt or so.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday January 08 2020, @01:52PM (4 children)
To be honest, you really have to expect a future where there are no quiet frequencies at all.
It's not unimaginable that, to squeeze everything out, apart from a few specialised and strictly enforced frequencies (e.g. military), everything else will become a free-for-all with something akin to DFS and the associated checking/listening and then they'll all spread themselves over every frequency available and hop to quite points and have to cope with interference from each other.
AM radio is already pretty much dead. Analogue TV bands have been given up. Everything's getting replaced with digital channels, frequency-hopping, etc.
Ham radio nuts will go mad, of course, but they are a relatively powerless minority with a niche usage that is basically obsolete even for their purposes. All the CB bands near me are full of digital chatter, not analogue transmission.
Treat the airwaves like a giant collection of sliced channels, spread all your data over all available channels, join it all back together at the IP layer, layer whatever else you need on top of that (e.g. audio, video, IP, etc.).
It's honestly the only way things will ever function in the future, especially when it comes down to "do people want IoT or do they want an old AM radio station", etc.
I accepted that inevitability over all kinds of other media - everything IP-based tends to be superior to broadcast, telephony, etc. - many years ago. Capacity, security, multi-purpose, standardisation, resiliency, there isn't much that doesn't gain.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday January 08 2020, @05:37PM (3 children)
Nonsense.
--
An apple a day keeps anyone away.
If you throw it hard enough.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday January 08 2020, @07:23PM (2 children)
You're kidding right? I can only be bothered to look for things I can find stats on for the UK, but 50% of all radio broadcast listening in the UK is via DAB. FM is the vast, vast majority of what remains. And it's a tiny market now. Hell, more people listen to radio through tuning their TV to a digital radio channel than AM.
"In general, an AM transmission needs to be about 20 times stronger than an interfering signal to avoid a reduction in quality, in contrast to FM signals, where the "capture effect" means that the dominant signal needs to only be about twice as strong as the interfering one"
I can probably tune... 2, maybe 3 AM stations near London. And about 20-25 FM stations. And hundreds of online/DAB/DVB stations. And all the AM ones have the same broadcasts on the other services.
The very first thing to go when we need those extra frequencies is analog AM broadcasting. And that's the mass-media, everyone-in-their-cars, stuff that comes for free with cheap phones, children's toys and car stereos. Any other usage of the AM frequencies is positively dead by comparison.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday January 08 2020, @08:52PM
Definitely not. [fyngyrz.com] That's just a portion of the AM broadcast (medium wave) band here; you can see there's a station that is receivable on every channel (though that's only part of the medium wave band here... this is also true right across the band), and furthermore, if I use phase discrimination like this [youtube.com], there's more than one station per channel that I can pull out and enjoy.
That is why you failed to assess the actual situation correctly.
Except, also no. First, because the AM band has entirely different propagation characteristics than VHF signals do. That makes it entirely impractical for many classes of use during a large portion of the day (and which make it great for listening during those same periods, because you can hear many non-local stations.) Second, because at these wavelengths, the transmitting antennas are relatively large.
Also, somewhat related, because of the propagation characteristics at medium wavelengths, digital broadcasting in these bands doesn't work even close to as well as analog does. There's way too much selective fading, phase shift, and multipath. Digital broadcasting in the medium wave bands has been tried and has been a rousing failure. So the only practical candidates for these wavelengths are analog signals, which in turn pretty much rule out a lot of the use cases where governments and corporations are inclined to be acquisitive. Medium wave is great for voice, pretty good for low-to-moderate-fi music, and downright terrible for data of any kind.
The vast majority of frequency acquisition and expansion is at VHF and above. Much of it well above VHF, in fact. The AM (and shortwave, for that matter) broadcast, utility and ham bands are at comparably little risk of encroachment or replacement for the above reasons.
--
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 08 2020, @09:22PM
Here where I am in the U.S., AM stations outnumber FM ones. But even in major metropolises, there are quite a number of AM stations, about one for every two FM stations, according to my sampling of major cities. Given the extra range of AM stations and the lower population density in many parts of the U.S., AM stations make sense. And that also doesn't factor in the large amounts of commuting/driving Americans do, which is prime radio-listening audience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 08 2020, @04:01PM
wah!
"Unfortunately, even though there are no currently unlicensed users of the 6 GHz band,..."
pluuuse, there are better ways to exercise the brain then deciphering double negatives.
"Unfortunately, even though there are currently only licensed users of the 6 GHz band,..." yes?