Wi-Fi 6 & Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E opens up additional spectrum in the 6 GHz band exclusively for the device classes "Low Power Indoor" (LPI) and "Very Low Power" (VLP). The advantage: The 6 GHz band is free of interference and thus offers minimum latency and maximum data throughput. The available spectrum in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, on the other hand, often represents a bottleneck. For example, the 2.4 GHz frequency band is crowded with a high number of clients, such as baby monitors and microwaves. And the number of users is also rising steadily in the 5 GHz band, where DFS (radar detection) is also a problem.

The best-known class "Low Power Indoor" (LPI) includes devices that are operated indoors and via power plug or PoE in Europe, and the use of batteries is prohibited. The maximum equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) is 200 mW (23 dBm). The "Very Low Power" (VLP) class, on the other hand, describes devices that are usually worn close to the body and span a so-called "Personal Area Network" (PAN). Well-known examples are AR/VR headsets and head-up displays in car windows, which also receive their data from an on-board computer or smartphone via Wi-Fi 6E. Their transmitting power is limited to just 25 mW (14 dBm).

OFDMA offers real advantages for Wi-Fi clients with smaller data packets, e.g. IoT devices. Wi-Fi 5 came with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as a method for channel management: During data transmission, the entire frequency range of a Wi-Fi channel is occupied per time interval.

The introduction of OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6 brought subcarriers as narrow as 2 MHz, meaning that packets that only contain small amounts of data do not block the entire channel. Several subcarriers share a 20-, 40- or even 80-MHz channel, although if necessary they can be bundled and operated together. This allows Wi-Fi channels to be utilized far more effectively.

It's comparable to carpooling: Large numbers of cars with a single occupant will cause heavy traffic, while fewer, multi-occupant cars can travel faster.

The theory: BSS Coloring with Spatial Re-Use is a mechanism that maximizes network performance while reducing the interference between Wi-Fi devices. Wireless networks offer the access points a limited number of channels. If several neighboring access points use the same channel, they will inevitably interfere with one another. In previous Wi-Fi infrastructures, one device could transmit while all the other Wi-Fi devices on the channel had to wait their turn, even if they were far enough away to allow a parallel data transmission. With Wi-Fi 6, wireless devices are learning to communicate with each other more transparently. This is done with a pseudo-coloring of each SSID. Wi-Fi 6 devices can distinguish these colors, detect “different colored” radios on the same channel, and stop interfering with them.