Next Generation Wireless (5G and Unlicensed)

802.11ax Guidelines & Trial – Enhanced Wi-Fi

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PROGRAM OVERVIEW

PROJECT LEADERS

Kishore Raja

Necati Canpolat

Mark Grayson

Florin Baboescu

Gabriel Marcos

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Project information

WBA champions the opportunity to showcase the operator grade capabilities from the next generation of Wi-Fi standard – 802.11ax.  The ‘ax’ standards is expected to be significantly faster than existing Wi-Fi, with wider channels, less congested networks with big advancement in overall throughputs.  

The previous work done by WBA conceptually matched the expected performance of 802.11ax against the requirements laid out for 5G (IMT-2020). Among others, it’s expected to deliver up to 40% higher peak data rates for a single client device and improve average throughput per user by at least 4 times in dense or congested environments.

Wi-Fi has a powerful role to play alongside other small cell technologies in delivering key use cases going forward in the 5G Era. It is important to leverage immediate opportunity to showcase the operator grade capabilities of 802.11ax systems with pre-standard trials, fast track the market adoption of 802.11ax and position as a key technology to address 5G use cases.

Outcomes / Target Audience

When adopting a new standard, it’s critical to make sure infrastructure and client devices will work together smoothly. Problems with compatibility can cause a fair amount of frustration for operators and the end users, especially if they have equipment that does not work well with the latest 802.11ax client devices.

The whitepaper leverages pre-certified devices available based on the latest draft of 802.11ax, provide E2E Guidelines and identify the core capabilities and business benefits to Operators and Technology Players.

The trial will test pre-certified devices for interoperability, to avoid the many potential issues including a suboptimal experience in which consumers could see degraded throughput, decreases in network efficiency and increased interference.

Keywords

802.11ax, Enhanced Wi-Fi, Gigabit Speeds, Dense Environments, Transmission Scheduling, Traffic Optimization, Trial, Slicing, 5G

Business objectives

  • Fast track market adoption of 802.11ax and position as a key technology to address 5G use cases
  • Leverage immediate opportunity to showcase the operator grade capabilities of 802.11ax systems

MAIN AREAS COVERED

  • Unfolding the potential of 802.11ax
  • How the industry shall deploy it the right way
  • How to ensure the users do not run into interop issues
  • Guarantee that equipment does not have to be replaced for interoperability reasons
  • Prioritize use case from operator community
  • Business opportunities for WBA members
  • Test plan to execute the early trial