Wi-Fi Alliance Begins to Certify Products with Wi-Fi 6E

The Wi-Fi Alliance has completed its Wi-Fi 6E certification program. This will certify the first products with support for this extension of the Wi-Fi 6 standard. The first products with Wi-Fi 6E support will be released in the coming months.

With the certification, the Wi-Fi Alliance guarantees interoperability for devices in the 6GHz spectrum. It’s a small step in the process of introducing Wi-Fi 6E to devices that require new hardware. This ability to use 6GHz is the most significant addition of Wi-Fi 6E, in addition to using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Compatibility with older Wi-Fi standards therefore remains.

This year, Wi-Fi 6E will take a big leap, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. The organization is talking about a ‘rapid adoption’ in 2021 and by 2022 it expects almost twenty percent of all Wi-Fi 6 devices to support 6GHz. Multiple Wi-Fi 6E chipsets from different companies are expected to be released and we can already count on a considerable number of smartphones, PCs and laptops that support the new standard in the first quarter of this year. Broadcom previously introduced chipsets aimed at network electronics and a chipset for smartphones. Qualcomm has already done that.

The European Electronic Communications Committee approved the use of the 6GHz band for Wi-Fi in November last year. This concerns 500MHz in the front part of the spectrum: from 5925 to 6425MHz. That is narrower than the permission that the US FCC gave in April last year. In the United States, the entire 6GHz band will be released, a total of 1200MHz of spectrum.

Wi-Fi 6E works with channels up to 160MHz wide, but as with 5GHz, channels of 20, 40 and 80MHz are also possible. Based on the American situation, a total of seven 160MHz channels fit next to each other in the full 1200MHz, while there are a maximum of two with WiFi in accordance with the 5GHz standard. Incidentally, the more limited allocation of the part of the 6GHz spectrum in Europe does not immediately lead to disadvantages; it will only be able to fill up faster in an imaginary situation where many users use the 6GHz band, as is now more often the case with 2.4GHz.

Just like WiFi at 5GHz, WiFi at 6GHz is particularly suitable for relatively short distances with few obstacles between the transmitter and receiver. The 2.4GHz frequency is more effective at longer distances and can overcome obstacles better. However, the range of Wi-Fi at 6GHz should not be significantly less than that of 5GHz, while the throughput and latency improve significantly.