Wi-Fi Alliance CEO: ‘Wi-Fi Certified 6 Release 2 furthers Wi-Fi’s evolution to address today’s market needs’
In the fall of 2019, Wi-Fi Alliance released the Wi-Fi Certified 6 certification program, designed to ensure the best user experience based on the latest generation of Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11ax. However, as the adoption of Wi-Fi 6 continues to grow, the Alliance felt it necessary established Wi-Fi Certified 6 Release 2, which will deliver new features that specifically address increasing device and traffic density.
According to Wi-Fi Alliance, the additional features in Release 2 — which apply across all bands supported by Wi-Fi 6 (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz) — will “deliver greater performance and power management with Wi-Fi devices and applications.
“Wi-Fi delivers advanced capabilities that have driven tremendous global innovation, paving the way for massive growth in Wi-Fi applications that users rely on every day,” commented Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO, Wi-Fi Alliance. “Wi-Fi Certified 6 Release 2 furthers Wi-Fi’s evolution to address today’s market needs, and supports more high-performance Wi-Fi scenarios with greater capacity, efficiency and reliability.”
Most notably, uplink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (multi-user MIMO) will improve gaming, streaming and video conferencing, as well as deliver faster upload times. In addition, Wi-Fi Certified 6 Release 2 will establish power management features to improve Wi-Fi 6 power efficiency for enterprise applications, including Broadcast Target Wake Time (TWT), Extended Sleep Time and Dynamic multi-user spatial multiplexing power save. Together, such features will allow for improved power optimization of battery-powered devices.
The news has been met with industry support, with Charles Cheevers, CTO, Home Networks, CommScope stating that the company “applaud[s]” Wi-Fi Alliance for the latest introduction of Wi-Fi Certified Release 2, which he said will bring “powerful new features” to the growing Wi-Fi 6 ecosystem.
Wi-Fi Alliance has a global lab network of authorized laboratories that it used in the development of Wi-Fi Certified 6. Cross sections of the industry are brought in to establish test regimes and protocols to ensure interoperability. The first products designated Wi-Fi Certified 6, and therefore, comprise the test bed for certification include Broadcom BCM4375, Intel Home Wi-Fi Chipset WAV600 Series, Marvell 88W9064 (4×4) Wi-Fi 6 Dual-Band STA, Qualcomm Networking Pro 1200 Platform and Ruckus R750 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point.
