Wi-Fi 6E

Introduced by Wi-Fi Alliance, Wi-Fi 6E is the upcoming standard for an extension of Wi-Fi 6 (also known as 802.11ax), enabling the operation of features in the unlicensed 6 GHz band, in addition to the currently supported 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.

With an additional 1200 MHz of spectrum available for use in the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi applications, Wi-Fi 6E devices will operate in 14 additional 80 MHz channels and 7 additional 160 MHz channels. This broader spectrum simplifies network design and deliver ultimate Wi-Fi performance with higher throughput and wider channels, while eliminating the need to support legacy devices, resulting in less network congestion.

Making use of this extended spectrum capacity in 6 GHz brings the promising outlook of continued innovation across Wi-Fi user experience and connected devices. The Wi-Fi 6E standard further improves the 802.11ax network user experience with faster and more reliable Wi-Fi networks that are designed for soaring device densities and high-bandwidth applications such as video streaming, videoconferencing, and voice calls.

Wi-Fi 6E provides all the features and capabilities of 802.11ax, but it does so by operating in the 6 GHz band. 802.11ax goes beyond boosting network speed and combines innovative technologies to improve overall network performance when connecting a large number of devices running high-bandwidth, low-latency applications.

Wi-Fi 6E networks will provide increased capacity by operating on the 6 GHz band with 14 additional 80 MHz channels and 7 additional 160 MHz channels, while leveraging these existing 802.11ax features:

• 8x8 uplink/downlink MU-MIMO, OFDMA, and BSS Color to provide up to four times more capacity to handle more devices.
• Target wake time (TWT) to improve network efficiency and device battery life, including that of IoT devices.
• 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation mode (1024-QAM) to increase throughput for emerging, bandwidth-intensive uses by transmitting more data in the same amount of spectrum.