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Anisha is a Product Manager for Aruba’s User Experience Insight solution. She’s passionate about shipping products that help solve real world customer problems.
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Introduced in 1997, the IEEE 802.11 standard, more commonly known as Wi-Fi, has continually evolved to address the need of increased speeds in enterprise Wi-Fi networks. Of late, however, data rate and throughput have become table stakes in any high-density WLAN deployment.
那是因为每个家庭的客户设备数量发生了爆炸。办公室和公共场所（例如购物中心，体育场和音乐会场所）也拥有高度密集的客户环境。需求已从“高速Wi-Fi”转变为“在极密密集的环境中快速有效的Wi-Fi”。
Enter 11ax. With the introduction of 802.11ax (also known as Wi-Fi 6), the wireless industry is now delivering bandwidth and efficiency several times that of the legacy 802.11b.
A quick recap of the key features of 11ax:
- Power savemode with enhancements to ensure that Wi-Fi scanning does not drain the battery of handheld and portable devices, including IoT devices.
- Uplink and downlink OFDMAis now mandatory, and as a result of the reduced congestion and overhead, high-density environments and large public venues will see a dramatic improvement in capacity.
- Uplink and downlink MU-MIMO,which was originally introduced in the downlink in the 11ac Wave 2 standard (MU-MIMO), will be included for the uplink in Wave 2 of 11ax. It allows multiple devices to simultaneously transmit at once, and that increases efficiency of the network.
- High-order modulationwith 1024 QAM will bring a 25% increase in peak data rates under high signal-to-noise conditions.
And much more!
Another Wi-Fi Revolution is Here
一场革命的大型企业,rvice providers and end-users. Here are three ways 802.11ax will make the Wi-Fi user experience better:
1. Improved efficiency for large public venues and support for more data.Moving forward, "overall efficiency" is the means to determine Wi-Fi performance, instead of the traditional throughput and speed measurements the industry has used for the last two decades.
An important enhancement in 11ax is a 4x longer duration of OFDM symbols as compared to 11ac. This drives increased efficiency and higher data rates. As a result, outdoor deployments such as on a large campus or in a stadium will see significantly better capacity and up to four times greater speeds for clients even at the cell boundaries.
Imagine a stadium full of happy sports fans, with phones in hand, streaming video and posting to social media over great Wi-Fi coverage. You read that right!
Figure 1: Speed of client at cell edge
2.改善了电池寿命和节能。11AX增强了访问无线介质的特定时间在AP和客户之间协商的功率节省机制。在新目标唤醒时间（TWT）功能的帮助下，客户知道何时轮到他们通过触发机制传输，该机制在预先谈判的时间唤醒了客户。使用TWT，客户之间的介质的争夺减少了，因此，几个试图同时传输的用户之间的重叠率要少得多。Wi-Fi客户的睡眠时间增加了多重。
由于这种能力，手持式或电池供电的便携式设备可以比以往任何时候都更能节省更多的功率。物联网设备还可以利用这种节能机制，我们希望看到更多旨在利用此功能的传感器和智能设备。
Imagine spending the day at a public place such as a zoo or a shopping mall and reaching for your phone at the end of the day to see that the battery isn’t about to die. Yep!
Figure 2: Target Wake Time
3. Dual-band operation. The 11ac standard operates only in the 5GHz band. Unlike its predecessor, 11ax operates in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. 11ax aims at improving the efficiency of both bands, while providing backward compatibility with the previous amendments of the IEEE standard.
Many wireless devices today operate solely in the 2.4 GHz band, such as fitness watches, wearables, mesh links and certain cell phone radios. The 2.4 GHz band is widely used in healthcare industry as well. Improved spectral efficiency supports the explosive growth of devices in the 2.4 GHz band, providing a better Wi-Fi experience for legacy and new Wi-Fi client devices.
想象一下，当发明了下一波智能连接的设备时，创新。以及新旧移动设备的和平共存。
802.11ax promises real-world performance improvements that will keep today’s mobile users and IoT devices connected and happy. I’m excited to see all the new possibilities!
Related Content
When Will We Be Able to Purchase 802.11ax Access Points and Client Devices
Why OFDMA is a Magical Feature in the 802.11ax Standard
How 802.11ax Improves the Experience for Everyone
Extending Network Capacity in Enterprise WLANs with 802.11ax
