Wifi is probably the most successful wireless protocol in the history of telecommunications thanks to its proliferation in industry, office, consumer, and telecom products. It’s getting harder to find any “smart” consumer electronics that don’t have Wifi or Bluetooth, and we shouldn’t expect these protocols to disappear anytime soon. The new Wifi 6 protocol continues innovating on past products to expand Wifi capabilities to higher data rates and more spatial streams. In addition, the frequency band landscape changes with Wifi 6, with 4 possible bandwidths in each channel.
Some of the original Wifi 6 products released from major manufacturers were SoCs from the likes of MediaTek, which targeted the 5G smartphone market. Other major networking and telecom manufacturers like Broadcom and Qualcomm released competitive products. Today, other semiconductor manufacturers are developing their own portfolio of Wifi 6 chipsets targeting any wireless product.
Before we introduce some example Wifi 6 chipset options for new electronics, let’s look at the technical specifications in the IEEE 802.11ax Standard, as well as what’s changed in Wifi 6 compared to earlier Wifi generations.
The newest generation of Wifi is similar to the previous generations in terms of frequency, but the major changes center around spatial streams, data rate, and bandwidth allocation. The idea here is to accommodate demands for more networked devices in the enterprise, office, home, and vehicle environments, but without sacrificing throughput or moving too far from the fundamental frequency range in 5 GHz Wifi.
How can we just up the data rate and number of devices that can be served in the new standard without increasing the carrier frequency (or number of carriers, as is done in 5G)? The answer is in modulation and in expanding frequency bands, which are critical to providing higher data rate and more carriers, respectively. Wifi 6 chipsets support MU-MIMO (multi-user, multi-input multi-output), which provides spatial multiplexing for data streams from multiple users. In other words, spatially separated network users can access a channel at the same time, and beam steering is used by the router/access point to send data back to the requesting user.
Note that MU-MIMO is used on the uplink and downlink, meaning the maximum data rate is applied in both directions as long as both devices are compatible with this data rate. This puts the pressure on antenna designers to build MIMO phased array antennas and select the right transceivers to support beamforming. On the antenna aspect, I’ve written about this in another recent article. The interface with the phased array antenna requires components to implement phase shifting to each emitter, either with analog switching or with digitally altering the phase of the emitted signal.
Just as everyone is getting acclimated to Wifi 6, there is also the release of Wifi 6E under an extension to the IEEE 802.11ax standard. Approved release of Wifi 6E products was still pending as of the end of 2020, with regulatory approval still being required expanding existing Wifi into the 6 GHz band. The FCC approved the first commercial Wifi 6E device in December 2020, and the Wifi alliance now has a 6E certification program for developers. Wifi 6E includes an extra 1200 MHz of spectrum beyond the top end of 5 GHz Wifi, as shown in the chart below.
This extension up to ~7 GHz frequencies will enable tri-band devices, i.e., products that can serve 3 possible bands simultaneously. Currently, there are only a few chipsets that will support tri-band products, which I’ll present below.
In the table below, I’ve summarized some of the important performance specifications for Wifi at 2.4/5 GHz, and for Wifi 6. Note that I’ve left off Wifi 6E because the specifications are basically the same, the protocol just operates into higher frequencies as shown in the graphic above. From this table, we can clearly see that there are many aspects of Wifi 6 that make it more attractive to designers. These include the broader frequency range in each channel, the use of 1024-QAM vs. 64- or 256-QAM, and more spatial streams to serve a greater number of users.
From the above table, we should be able to see that the system can only get up to maximum data rate thanks to 1024-QAM compared with Wifi 5 under the 802.11ac standard. However, the great thing about Wifi 6 is that the higher data rate and spatial multiplexing extends down to 2.4 GHz, giving a big improvement over other 2.4 GHz Wifi.
Anytime a new generation of a classic technology is rolled out, everyone worries about backward compatibility with older generations and products. Wifi 6 is no different. However, the standards allow for backward compatibility between Wifi 6/6E and 802.11a/b/g/n/ac. Obviously, end devices don’t get to experience the data rate increase just because an access point was upgraded to a Wifi 6 product, the client devices also need to be Wifi 6 compatible in that case.
Currently, there are a number of Wifi 6 networking products like switches and routers on the market, but we’re still waiting to see Wifi 6E products become available. Some newer smartphones are also Wifi 6 enabled thanks to newer SoCs from companies like MediaTek and Broadcom.
In the next section, we’ll look at some available components for Wifi 6 and Wifi 6E chipsets. Only a small number of manufacturers have jumped into this arena and developed product portfolios to support Wifi 6, but we can expect more component manufacturers to support the Wifi 6/6E ecosystem as time progresses. The available components target a range of applications and industries, and they can provide dual-band or tri-band spatial multiplexing at high data rates.
The QCS-AX family from ON Semiconductor targets a range of commercial and consumer Wifi 6 applications. The QCS-AX-Dx product line is a group of integrated baseband + transceiver products that support varying levels of spatial multiplexing and different frequencies. These baseband + transceiver components provide 4x4 + 8x8, 5x5 + 2x2, and 5x5 + 4x4 spatial streams at either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz, respectively. Dual-band components are also available. Some target end products for these components include wireless access points, mesh repeaters, and Wifi extenders.
These two access point controller SoCs are dual-band 4x4 (88W9064) and 8x8 (88W9068) wireless access solutions for Wifi 6 systems. The 88W9068 is intended for devices with large traffic queues and it includes on-device management features to ensure high data throughput. This component supports data rates up to 4.8 Gbps for other Wifi 6 devices, and it connects to an external host controller via PCIe Gen3.
The 88W9064 controller SoC offers lower data rate of 2.4 Gbps and only provides 4x4 spatial multiplexing. However, this component includes integrated Bluetooth 5 for home and enterprise access, making it useful in access points for smart home, retail, and office networking products. Since this component is only a controller, it would not be used for networking in mobile devices, a dedicated MCU SoC would be used instead. A similar product that targets automotive is the 88Q9098, which provides 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5.1 for end users.
The Networking Pro suite of products from Qualcomm targets networking equipment for enterprise LANs in office buildings and large campuses. These components support Wifi 6/6E frequencies with high spatial stream count in a small package. Compared to the other components in this list, these SoCs are highly integrated with a suite of on-chip features optimized uplink/downlink scheduling, security, and high user count. As an example, the Networking Pro 1610 component supports sustained throughput for up to 2000 users on a single access point. It also interfaces with external peripherals over PCIe 3.0, PCIe 2.0, PTA Coex, I2S, I2C, Ethernet, SD/eMMC, SDIO, SPI, UART, and USB 3.0 at 2.2 GHz.
Although the Networking Pro suite primarily targets networked products, Qualcomm also offers mobile-centric and automotive-centric products within this product line. For example, the QCA6696 component supports Wifi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 for in-vehicle and inter-vehicle networking with 2x2+2x2 MIMO. The FastConnect 6xxx suite supports mobile devices with an integrated SoC supports Wifi 6/6E and Bluetooth 5.2 at multi-gig data transfer rates per channel.
Today, Wifi 6 chipsets are making their way into the networking space, and it’s only a matter of time before smartphones, appliances, smart IoT products, and other devices adopt the same standard. Wifi 6E chipsets are still new and it will be some time before these are adopted in more products. However, innovative companies can use the component sets shown above to quickly move into the market with new products. Eventually, we’ll see the same type of transceiver/PHY integration into processors that we see with other high speed/high frequency protocols.
In addition to the Wifi 6/6E chipsets shown above, more advanced wireless products will need a range of other components. The components shown above are the main components required to support the networking functions in Wifi 6/6E; some other basic components for wireless networked systems include:
Once you’ve chosen your Wifi 6 chipset and it’s time to select other supporting components, you can use the advanced search and filtration features in Octopart to find the components you need. The electronics search engine features in Octopart can help you choose Wifi 6/6E components by manufacturer, technical specifications, and many other filters to suit your needs. You can also access distributor pricing data, parts inventory, parts specifications, and CAD data, and it’s all freely accessible in a user-friendly interface. Take a look at our connectors page to find the components you need.
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