Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1476549
8 I ICT TODAY Wi-Fi TECHNOLOGIES CONTINUE TO EVOLVE As an information delivery method, Wi-Fi has been in existence for decades. The need for constant improve- ment is essential to providing the performance necessary for consumers and enterprise networks today and into the future. There have been eight iterations of the Wi-Fi network protocol, with the latest—IEEE 802.11ax— released in 2019. Each iteration has been faster and more reliable than its predecessor. In October of 2018, the Wi-Fi Alliance TM adopted a more traditional naming approach to help eliminate confusion among the standards. This simpler identifica- tion method makes it easier to determine the generation of technology and product compatibility. Based on the new naming standards, IEEE 802.11n refers to Wi-Fi 4; IEEE 802.11ac refers to Wi-Fi 5; and IEEE 802.11ax refers to Wi-Fi 6. Furthermore, IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) is the forthcoming new amendment to the Wi-Fi standard, referred to as Wi-Fi 7. IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) beamforming technology that is capable of accurately aiming the streams at the receiver's antenna. Additionally, an even more significant technology advancement developed for the Wi-Fi 6 standard is the use of MU-MIMO with an LTE cellular base station tech- nology called orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). This allows each MU-MIMO stream to be split into four additional streams, boosting the effective bandwidth per user by 4X. Basic service set (BSS) coloring is yet another Wi-Fi advancement that helps improve network congestion. Overlapping basic service set (OBSS) occurs when two or more unrelated WAPs are installed in close proximity and operating on the same transmission channel interfere with each other. This problem can significantly reduce the network's perfor- mance. The BSS coloring is a method used to differentiate between the BSS of WAPs and their clients on the same radio frequency (RF) channel. The result is mitigation of co-channel interference. Together, OFDMA and BSS coloring allow the network to handle large amounts of network traffic more efficiently. As more and more devices utilize the Wi-Fi network, this will help preserve the speed and stability of the network connections. Other technologies introduced in Wi-Fi 6, such as trigger-based random access and dynamic fragmen- tation coupled with spatial frequency reuse, provide for deterministic communication in congested environments, a necessity in time-critical applications. Lastly, Wi-Fi 6 introduces a technology called target wake time (TWT), which allows for more efficient com- munication between the router and client device in terms of sleep and wake mode. It promises to make a significant improvement in battery life because the client device will spend less time and energy searching for a wireless signal. Although Wi-Fi 6 offers many advantages over previous Wi-Fi iterations, the unpredicted, rapid release of more Wi-Fi enabled devices and bandwidth-hungry applications revealed that Wi-Fi 6 needed something more. As a result, the largest breakthrough in the history of Wi-Fi took place on April 23, 2020 when the FCC released 1,200 MHz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band (5.925-7.125 GHz) for unlicensed use. This takes Wi-Fi 6 technology and extends it into the 6 GHz band, known as Wi-Fi 6E (E = extended) for even greater performance. Ever since the Wi-Fi Alliance provided certification for Wi-Fi 6 in 2019, it has recognized this iteration as the most widely adopted Wi-Fi standard to date, exceeding 50 percent market share in three years compared to four years for Wi-Fi 5 (IEEE 802.11ac.). In addition, Wi-Fi 6 provides improved performance, faster speeds, expanded coverage, and longer battery life compared to Wi-Fi 5. Advanced features of Wi-Fi 6 are offering new opportunities for the IoT and densification in public areas. Whereas Wi-Fi 5 operates in the 5 GHz range only, Wi-Fi 6 operates in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ranges, creating more available channels. Additionally, Wi-Fi 6 offers increased throughput using a higher level of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), which allows for more data-per-packet transmission. In terms of downloads from the WAP to the client, early Wi-Fi standards only supported one transmission at a time per WAP. The second wave of Wi-Fi 5 began using multi-user, multiple-input, multiple output (MU-MIMO), which allows WAPs to send up to four streams simultaneously. However, Wi-Fi 6 allows for eight simultaneous streams and makes use of specific