Six chipmakers have already won certification for 5G Wi-Fi designs. This week the Wi-Fi Alliance announced its certification program for 802.11ac, also known as 5G Wi-Fi because it uses the 5 Ghz spectrum band. 5G Wi-Fi delivers data speeds up to three times as fast as current Wi-Fi products, so it can support streaming video or gaming on multiple devices.
“Consumers have an insatiable appetite for rich, connected experiences,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance. “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac advances the ability of Wi-Fi to satisfy that appetite by increasing capacity and improving performance.” The Alliance said that consumers will start to see 802.11ac certified devices this year.
The first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac products which form the test suite for the certification program are:
Broadcom BCM4360 5G WiFi Single Chip MAC/PHY/Radio for Clients and Routers
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260
Marvell Avastar 88W8897 AP Reference Design
Marvell Avastar 88W8897 STA Reference Design
MediaTek Dual Band 802.11ac Reference Access Point
MediaTek Dual Band 802.11ac Reference STA
Qualcomm® VIVE™ 802.11ac 3-stream Dual-band, Dual-concurrent Router
Qualcomm® VIVE™ 802.11ac 3-stream, PCIe Client
Realtek RTL8197D+RTL8188AR+RTL8192CE AP/Router
Realtek RTL8812AE HMC card
The Wi-Fi Alliance said that Mmost 802.11ac-certified products are expected to be dual-band, operating in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.
