Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1284149
October/November/December 2020 I 9 UNLICENSED 6 GHZ SPECTRUM In April 2020, the FCC released a 1.2 GHz plot of unli- censed spectrum—from 5.925 GHz to 7.125 GHz—to serve as the basis for new wireless communications. This spectrum is significant for a number of reasons: • It is the first addition to consumer wireless frequencies in 20 years. • It triples the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi, adding 1.2 GHz to the previous ~600 MHz of available spectrum. • Because it is unlicensed, its use is not restricted to a single company or geography in the way that 5G is, for example. As a result, it is open to multiple uses by various users throughout the country. Furthermore, this additional spectrum would represent the effective doubling of lanes on the wireless highways. THE Wi-Fi 6E STANDARD How does Wi-Fi 6E benefit from 6 GHz unlicensed spec- trum? In short, it makes things, especially devices, much faster. The "E" in Wi-Fi 6E refers to "extended" spectrum and includes operation in the new 6 GHz band. This is not to be confused with current Wi-Fi 6 technology, which simply denotes the sixth generation of the Wi-Fi standard and operates over the usual 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands (Figure 2). As the only Wi-Fi standard to use the new 6 GHz band, Wi-Fi 6E is in a unique position to deliver faster speeds, lower latency, and higher overall performance 5 GHz 20/40/80/160 MHz 20/40 MHz 2.4 GHz 6 GHz 5.925-7.172 GHz [~1 GHz] 20/40/80/160 MHz Freq. FIGURE 2: Wi-Fi 6E approvals. (Image: ©2020 CommScope. All rights reserved.) than previous generations of Wi-Fi. The reason is that these new lanes on the proverbial highway can only be used by Wi-Fi 6E devices, which will be the latest and fastest devices available. An analogy to illustrate this scenario involves the highways in India. Today, on these highways, it is not unusual for drivers to encounter any number of obstacles, including the usual debilitating density of other drivers, foot traffic, bicycles, and narrow lanes. Much like today's 5 GHz Wi-Fi bands, these highways are already full, and some, like the 2.4 GHz band, are overflowing. Additional challenges include dynamic frequency selection (DFS) and false detection issues on 5 GHz. These challenges can be thought of as the highway equivalent of drivers assuming that road construction crews will close off a lane, preemptively overburdening other lanes to avoid it, only to realize later that there was no road construction in the first place. This scenario gives a sense of how busy, fragile and overtaxed the current Wi-Fi situation really is. With Wi-Fi 6E, it is similar to adding brand new lanes, but it is much more like adding a completely sepa- rate parallel highway where the road surface is smooth, the lanes are wide, and the only things allowed are the fastest, most efficient, and intelligent cars that do not get in the way of one another. Greater spaces between cars afford a greater margin of safety or reliability, and the wider lanes make room for larger vehicles to carry more things and deliver them more efficiently. It is a completely different world that allows Wi-Fi to be used in a way it has never been used before. Wi-Fi 6E The FCC approved 1,200 MHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 6 GHz band. Europe and the UK are expected to release 500 MHz in 2021.