Based on the IEEE 802.11ac standard, the key feature of Wave 2 Wi-Fi, which recently gained Wi-Fi Alliance certification, is MU-MIMO
As consumers simultaneously adopt smart home solutions coupled with gigabit-speed home internet, devices featuring Wave 2 Wi-Fi technologies are purpose-built to simultaneously support multiple connected users.
And with Wave 2 Wi-Fi recently gaining certification from the industrywide Wi-Fi Alliance, supporting products are well-positioned to see increased uptake by conservative enterprise IT customers. Although Wave 2 products have been available for more than a year, the certification is a mark of interoperability that’s important for business buyers.
Wave 2 Wi-Fi standard
The IEEE adopted the standard, 802.11ac, that defines Wave 2 Wi-Fi back in January 2014.
When the standard was released, Bruce Kraemer, chair of the IEEE 802.11 working group, said the idea was to support ever-increasing demands for capacity.
“As wireless networks become more widely deployed,” he said, “users are able to transition applications from fixed links to the convenience, freedom and versatility of wireless links. IEEE 802.11ac is intended to meet these evolving needs for higher data rates and to help enable new generations of data-intensive wireless applications.”
Key features of the Wave 2 Wi-Fi spec adds channel bandwidth of 80 megahertz and 160 megahertz with both contiguous and noncontiguous 160 megahertz channels. Higher order 256 quadrature amplitude modulation provides a 33% improvement in data rate; the data rate is doubled again by increasing the number of spatial streams to eight.
Multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output supports concurrent downlink transmission with smart antenna technology, and enables more-efficient spectrum use, higher capacity and lower latency across four simultaneous data streams.
One of the drawbacks MU-MIMO faces, however, is device support. Although there has been notable progress on MU-MIMO chipset support and in router deployments over the past 12-18 months, SRG noted “we’ve noticed that a rather large percentage of smartphones do not have a 2×2 Wi-Fi antenna configuration” — that while MIMO’s use in HSPA+ and LTE cellular phones is nearly ubiquitous, the same is not true for Wi-Fi. However, newer phones do indeed support MIMO for Wi-Fi including the Google Nexus 5x
Several Wave 2 products, including lots of routers, were showcased at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show.
Wave 2 Wi-Fi certification
However, the number of devices that support Wave 2 Wi-Fi is expected to quickly grow now that the technology has been certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, which ensures interoperability among devices, an important designation in the Wi-Fi ecosystem because many devices and access points have long life cycles.
“The second wave of features is really going to take Wi-Fi to an amazing new height in terms of performance and capacity – both on the consumer side in the home – but also it’s relevant to service providers and the experience that they can deliver to their customers because of these new capabilities,” said Kevin Robinson, VP of marketing for Wi-Fi Alliance. Wave 2 is expected to deliver speeds as high as 3.47 gigabits per second.
Last December, Strategy Analytics reported 802.11ac Wave 2 technology was already gaining “rapid traction” and predicted Wave 2 “will become the highest shipping Wi-Fi standard yet.”
Christopher Taylor, director of radio frequency and wireless components at Strategy Analytics, noted the technology “works best when both ends of the Wi-Fi connection have Wave 2 capable radio chips” and at the time there were already more than 60 device models with Wave 2 feature support. Strategy Analytics expects hundreds of millions of Wave 2-enabled devices will ship this year, leading to tens of millions of Wave 2 routers and related infrastructure being sold through 2017.
But faster fiber-to-the-home speeds and DOCSIS 3.1 are emerging as well, so that wireless and wireline can keep pace with each other so long as the new technologies are in place on both sides.
“You’re getting faster pipes coming into the home, which means you need to have an efficient way of distributing that to all of your clients. Having an access point that can’t meet the speeds of the pipe coming in is an artificial bottleneck,” said Mark Grodzinsky, senior director of product management at Qualcomm. Grodzinsky added certification programs like the WFA’s can open up the enterprise to new technologies.
“When you’re doing these large-scale deployments, they want to see kind of a more rigorous and more thorough testing because they basically need to ensure that all of the clients will work seamlessly in these large-scale deployments,” he said.
