IEEE 802.11ax

IEEE 802.11ax, also known as Wi-Fi 6,[1][2] is a type of WLAN in the IEEE 802.11 set of types of WLANs. IEEE 802.11ax is designed to operate in the already existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrums and it will incorporate additional bands between 1 and 7 GHz as they become available. In addition to utilizing MIMO and MU-MIMO, the new amendment introduces OFDMA to improve overall spectral efficiency, and higher order 1024-QAM modulation support for increased throughput. Though the nominal data rate is just 37% higher than IEEE 802.11ac, the new amendment is expected to achieve a 4× increase to user throughput due to more efficient spectrum utilization.

IEEE 802.11ax is due to be publicly released sometime in 2019.[3] Devices were presented at CES 2018 that showed a top speed of 11 Gbit/s.[4]

Rate set

Modulation and coding schemes for single spatial stream
MCS
index[lower-alpha 1]		 Modulation
type		 Coding
rate		 Data rate (in Mb/s)[lower-alpha 2]
20 MHz channels40 MHz channels80 MHz channels160 MHz channels
1600 ns GI[lower-alpha 3]800 ns GI1600 ns GI800 ns GI1600 ns GI800 ns GI1600 ns GI800 ns GI
0BPSK1/24(?)4(?)8(?)9(?)17(?)18(?)34(?)36(?)
1QPSK1/2161733346872136144
2QPSK3/424264952102108204216
316-QAM1/233346569136144272282
416-QAM3/4495298103204216408432
564-QAM2/36569130138272288544576
664-QAM3/47377146155306324613649
764-QAM5/68186163172340360681721
8256-QAM3/498103195207408432817865
9256-QAM5/6108115217229453480907961
101024-QAM3/412212924425851054010211081
111024-QAM5/613514327128756760011341201

Notes

  1. ↑ MCS 9 is not applicable to all channel width/spatial stream combinations.
  2. ↑ A second stream doubles the theoretical data rate, a third one triples it, etc.
  3. ↑ GI stands for the guard interval.

Technical improvements

The 802.11ax amendment will bring several key improvements over 802.11ac. 802.11ax addresses frequency bands between 1 GHz and 5 GHz.[5] Therefore, unlike 802.11ac, 802.11ax will also operate in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band. To meet the goal of supporting dense 802.11 deployments the following features have been approved.

Feature 802.11ac 802.11ax Comment
OFDMA not available Centrally controlled medium access with dynamic assignment of 26, 52, 106, 242(?), 484(?), or 996(?) tones per station. Each tone consist of a single subcarrier of 78.125 kHz bandwidth. Therefore, bandwidth occupied by a single OFDMA transmission is between 2.03125 MHz and ca. 80 MHz bandwidth. OFDMA segregates the spectrum in time-frequency resource units (RUs). A central coordinating entity (the AP in 802.11ax) assigns RUs for reception or transmission to associated stations. Through the central scheduling of the RUs contention overhead can be avoided, which increases efficiency in scenarios of dense deployments.
Multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) available in Downlink direction Available in Downlink and Uplink direction With Downlink MU MIMO a device may transmit concurrently to multiple receivers and with Uplink MU MIMO a device may simultaneously receive from multiple transmitters. Whereas OFDMA separates receivers to different RUs, with MU MIMO the devices are separated to different spatial streams. In 802.11ax, MU MIMO and OFDMA technologies can be used simultaneously. To enable uplink MU transmissions, the AP transmits a new control frame (Trigger) which contains scheduling information (RUs allocations for stations, modulation and coding scheme (MCS) that shall be used for each station). Furthermore, Trigger also provides synchronization for an uplink transmission, since the transmission starts SIFS after the end of Trigger.
Trigger-based Random Access not available Allows performing UL OFDMA transmissions by stations which are not allocated RUs directly. In Trigger frame, the AP specifies scheduling information about subsequent UL MU transmission. However, several RUs can be assigned for random access. Stations which are not assigned RUs directly can perform transmissions within RUs assigned for random access. To reduce collision probability (i.e. situation when two or more stations select the same RU for transmission), the 802.11ax amendment specifies special OFDMA back-off procedure. Random access is favorable for transmitting buffer status reports when the AP has no information about pending UL traffic at a station.
Spatial frequency reuse not available Coloring enables devices to differentiate transmissions in their own network from transmissions in neighboring networks.

Adaptive Power and Sensitivity Thresholds allows dynamically adjusting transmit power and signal detection threshold to increase spatial reuse.

Without spatial reuse capabilities devices refuse transmitting concurrently to transmissions ongoing in other, neighboring networks. With coloring, a wireless transmission is marked at its very beginning helping surrounding devices to decide if a simultaneous use of the wireless medium is permissible or not. A station is allowed to consider the wireless medium as idle and start a new transmission even if the detected signal level from a neighboring network exceeds legacy signal detection threshold, provided that the transmit power for the new transmission is appropriately decreased.
NAV Single NAV Two NAVs In dense deployment scenarios, NAV value set by a frame originated from one network may be easily reset by a frame originated from another network, which leads to misbehavior and collisions. To avoid this, each 802.11ax station will maintain two separate NAVs — one NAV is modified by frames originated from a network the station is associated with, the other NAV is modified by frames originated from overlapped networks.
Target Wake Time (TWT) not available TWT reduces power consumption and medium access contention. TWT is a concept developed in 802.11ah. It allows devices to wake up at other periods than the beacon transmission period. Furthermore, the AP may group device to different TWT period thereby reducing the number of devices contending simultaneously for the wireless medium.
Fragmentation Static fragmentation Dynamic fragmentation With static fragmentation all fragments of a data packet are of equal size except for the last fragment. With dynamic fragmentation a device may fill available RUs of other opportunities to transmit up to the available maximum duration. Thus, dynamic fragmentation helps reduce overhead.
Guard interval duration 0.4 µs or 0.8 µs 0.8 µs, 1.6 µs or 3.2 µs Extended guard interval durations allow for better protection against signal delay spread as it occurs in outdoor environments.
Symbol duration 3.2 µs 3.2 µs, 6.4 µs, or 12.8 µs Extended symbol durations allow for increased efficiency.[6]

Products

Silicon

On October 17, 2016, Quantenna announced the first 802.11ax silicon, the QSR10G-AX. The chipset is compliant with Draft 1.0 and supports eight 5 GHz streams and four 2.4 GHz streams. In January 2017 Quantenna added the QSR5G-AX to their portfolio with support for four streams in both bands.[7] Both products are aimed at routers and access points. On February 13, 2017, Qualcomm announced their first 802.11ax silicon.[8][9][10] The IPQ8074 is a complete SoC with four Cortex-A53 cores. There is support for eight 5 GHz streams and four 2.4 GHz streams. The QCA6290 chipset which supports two streams in both bands and aims at mobile devices. On August 15, 2017, Broadcom announced their 6th Generation of Wi-Fi products with 802.11ax support.[11][12] The BCM43684 and BCM43694 are 4×4 MIMO chips with full 802.11ax support, while the BCM4375 provides 2 × 2 MIMO 802.11ax along with Bluetooth 5.0. On December 11th, 2017, Marvell announced 802.11ax chipsets consisting of 88W9068, 88W9064 and 88W9064S.[13][14] On February 21, 2018, Qualcomm announced the WCN3998, a 2x2 802.11ax chipset for smartphones and mobile devices.[15] As of April 2018, Intel is working on a 802.11ax chipset for mobile devices, the Wireless-AX 22560 with Harrison Peak codename.[16][17]

Devices

Routers

On August 30, 2017, Asus announced the first 802.11ax router.[4][18] The RT-AX88U uses Broadcom silicon, has 4×4 MIMO in both bands and achieves a maximum of 1148 Mb/s on 2.4 GHz and 4804 Mb/s on 5 GHz. On September 12, 2017, Huawei announced their first 802.11ax access point. The AP7060DN uses 8×8 MIMO and is based on Qualcomm hardware.[19][20] On January 25, 2018, Aerohive Networks announced the first family of 802.11ax access points. The AP630, AP650, and AP650X are based on Broadcom chipsets.

References

  1. ↑ England, Rachel. "The next generation of wireless networking will be called WiFi 6". Engadget. Retrieved 2018-10-03.
  2. ↑ "Wi-Fi now has version numbers, and Wi-Fi 6 comes out next year". The Verge. Retrieved 2018-10-04.
  3. ↑ Gold, Jon. "FAQ: What you need to know about 802.11ax, the next big Wi-Fi standard". Network World. Retrieved 2017-08-22.
  4. 1 2 Dignan, Larry (January 8, 2018). "D-Link, Asus tout 802.11ax Wi-Fi routers, but you'll have to wait until later in 2018". zdnet. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  5. ↑ Aboul-Magd, Osama (2014-01-24). "P802.11ax" (PDF). IEEE-SA. Retrieved 2017-01-14.
  6. ↑ Porat, Ron; Fischer, Matthew; Venkateswaran, Sriram; Nguyen, Tu; Erceg, Vinko; Stacey, Robert; Perahia, Eldad; Azizi, Shahrnaz; Huang, Po-Kai; Li, Qinghua; Chen, Xiaogang; Ghosh, Chitto; Yang, Rongzhen; Tong, Fei; Kang, Hyunjeong; Josiam, Kaushik; Rison, Mark; Taori, Rakesh; Chang, Sanghyun; Wang, Lei; Zhang, Hongyuan; Sun, Yakun; Chu, Liwen; Xu, Mingguan; Jiang, Jinjing; Zhang, Yan; Cao, Rui; Srinivasa, Sudhir; Tamhane, Saga; Yu, Mao; Au, Edward; Lu, Hui-Ling; Takatori, Yasushi; Inoue, Yasuhiko; Asai, Yusuke; Ishihara, Koichi; Kishida, Akira; Yamada, Akira; Watanabe, Fujio; Papadopoulos, Haralabos; Barber, Phillip; Loc, Peter; Liu, Le; Luo, Jun; Luo, Yi; Lin, Yingpei; Pang, Jiyong; Rong, Zhigang; Sun, Rob; Yang, David X.; Yang, Yunsong; Lan, Zhou; Suh, Junghoon; Zhang, Jiayin; cariou, Laurent; Derham, Thomas; Lee, Wookbong; Ryu, Kiseon; Chun, Jinyoung; Choi, Jinsoo; Kim, Jeongki; Park, Giwon; Lim, Dongguk; Kim, Suhwook; Park, Eunsung; Cho, HanGyu; Van Zelst, Albert; Asterjadhi, Alfred; Tian, Bin; Aldana, Carlos; Cherian, George; Barriac, Gwendolyn; Sampath, Hemanth; Wentink, Menzo; Van Nee, Richard; De Vegt, Rolf; Vermani, Sameer; Merlin, Simone; Yucek, Tevfik; Jones, VK; Kim, Youhan; Yee, James; Jauh, Alan; Hu, Chingwa; Hsu, Frank; Pare, Thomas; Wang, ChaoChun; Wang, James; Liu, Jianhan; Wu, Tianyu; Huang, Russell (2015-01-12). "Payload Symbol Size for 11ax". IEEE P802.11. Retrieved 2017-01-14.
  7. ↑ "Quantenna Announces QSR5G-AX, an 802.11ax Dual 4×4 Wi-Fi Access Point Solution targeting the Mainstream Wi-Fi Segment". Retrieved 2017-03-26.
  8. ↑ "Qualcomm and 802.11ax Wi-Fi tech: Game-changing breakthrough for dense networks | Qualcomm". Qualcomm. 2017-02-13. Retrieved 2017-03-26.
  9. ↑ "Qualcomm Announces First End-to-End 802.11ax Wi-Fi Portfolio | Qualcomm". Qualcomm. 2017-02-13. Retrieved 2017-03-26.
  10. ↑ "Qualcomm made a new Wi-Fi chip for the next generation of Wi-Fi". The Verge. Retrieved 2018-10-04.
  11. ↑ "Broadcom Announces Availability of Industry's First Complete Ecosystem of 802.11ax Solutions". www.broadcom.com. Retrieved 2017-08-16.
  12. ↑ "Broadcom unveils MAX, better Wi-Fi based on 802.11ax | FierceWireless". www.fiercewireless.com. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  13. ↑ "Wireless - 802.11AX - Marvell". www.marvell.com. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  14. ↑ "Marvell 88W9068 Product Brief".
  15. ↑ "Qualcomm Introduces the Industry's First Integrated 802.11ax-ready Solution for Smartphones and Computing Devices | Qualcomm". Qualcomm. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  16. ↑ "Intel® Wireless Products: Documents and Datasheets". Intel. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  17. ↑ "r/intel - Intel mentions Wireless-AX 22560 network adapter". reddit. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  18. ↑ "ASUS Press Room". press.asus.com. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  19. ↑ "X-Gen Wi-Fi". e.huawei.com. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
  20. ↑ "Huawei Launches X-Gen Wi-Fi to Redefine the Agile Campus Network Era". huawei. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
  • Evgeny Khorov, Anton Kiryanov, Andrey Lyakhov. ''IEEE 802.11ax: How to Build High Efficiency WLANs.'' IEEE International Conference on Engineering and Telecommunication (EnT), 2015.
  • "Are you ready for the next chapter of Wi-Fi? Meet 802.11ax"
  • Bellalta, Boris (2015). "IEEE 802.11ax: High-Efficiency WLANs,". IEEE Wireless Communications. 23: 38–46. arXiv:1501.01496v4. doi:10.1109/MWC.2016.7422404.
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