Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Release 2 adds new features for advanced Wi-Fi apps

With adoption of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 growing steadily, Wi-Fi Alliance is evolving Wi-Fi 6 certification to meet increasing demands from today’s Wi-Fi use cases. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Release 2 is now available, bringing new features that support increasing device and traffic density to deliver greater performance and power management with Wi-Fi devices and applications.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Release 2 adds support for uplink multi-user multiple input, multiple output (multi-user MIMO) to deliver smoother streaming services and video conferencing, faster uploads, and more reliable gaming. Additionally, three power management features improve Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 power efficiency, benefitting enterprise, industrial, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

New features apply across all bands supported by Wi-Fi 6 – 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz - bringing capacity, efficiency, coverage and performance benefits to residential, enterprise, and large public networks. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 delivers the best experience with advanced applications, while providing strong WPA3 security and promoting interoperability between Wi-Fi CERTIFIED devices.

“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,” said 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.”

Wi-Fi uplink performance

Nearly two billion Wi-Fi 6 devices will enter the market in 2022<1>, and today’s Wi-Fi supports increased device density, more bandwidth-hungry applications, and surges in uplink data demand in residential and enterprise environments. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Release 2 adds support for uplink multi-user MIMO, enabling devices to upload content concurrently to an access point (AP). Wi-Fi networks are supporting more upstream activity, with users frequently uploading work documents and videos to social media sites, and the trend toward greater uplink data consumption will further increase as more IoT devices send data via Wi-Fi to the cloud.

Uplink multi-user MIMO improves network performance and reduces latency while video conferencing, uploading documents, and any other mission-critical applications that require greater uplink capacity. Wi-Fi 6 deployments are increasing worldwide in large office buildings, public arenas, education campuses, high rise dwellings, and mass transportation hubs, and advanced Wi-Fi 6 capabilities drive innovation in the countless applications that rely on Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Release 2 delivers comprehensive multi-user MIMO implementation to deliver strong Wi-Fi performance even in challenging environments with many Wi-Fi devices.

Wi-Fi power management

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Release 2 includes new features that bring power management improvements for devices in enterprise and IoT deployments. New low power and sleep mode enhancements – including broadcast target wake time (TWT), extended sleep time, and dynamic multi-user spatial multiplexing power save (SMPS)– enable power optimization of multiple battery powered devices.

This trio of features allow multiple devices to receive extended sleep periods, allow for specific “wake up” times for transmitting data, and enable dynamic shut off of redundant receive chains to optimize power consumption in Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Release 2 networks. Power management features benefit smart home, smart city, and Industrial IoT (IIoT) environments, and enable Wi-Fi to further its role in delivering IoT applications.