WiFi

What is Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE802.11ax)? How does it compare to Wi-Fi 5 (IEEE802.11ac)? Will older phones connect to Wi-Fi 6? The post combines the most frequently asked questions about Wi-Fi 6.

Recently, we’ve been doing numerous site surveys and verification of Wi-Fi deployments in offices with more than 50APs per office in a managed setup (meaning that the APs are under the supervision of a wireless controller). In this post, I’d like to sketch an overview of the encountered issues and improvement suggestions.

The AP schedules the transmission according to the actual needs, and nobody wastes time on waiting and on collision. So, we end-up having the system that: is more robust towards low latency services; is more spectrally efficient; allows for actually use some QoS profiles; and coordinates the use of spectrum.

Wi-Fi Generations affect not only new releases, but also refer to the past amendments. Currently Wi-Fi Alliance has defined 6 generations. Each step is significant improvement in network performance and security. No more minor version changes that can cause only confusion.

The 802.11ax brings important features, focusing on network capacity, latency and range. High data rates are still in the picture, but rather in the background. Introducing OFDMA and using MU-MIMO allows AP to schedule data for multiple users simultaneously. This way, latency can be greatly decreased. With the new colors of the channels, frequencies can be spatially reused.

Introduction First Wi-Fi networks appeared in late 90s and many of us use them ever since. During these years we could observe significant increase of throughput, but what is important, it is not only due to the ISP providing better link. Wi-Fi standard also evolved to keep up with the higher throughputs. If there will […]

After discussing the main wireless transmission concept (How wireless works?), main channel propagation phenomena (What is pathloss? and What is shadowing?), and antenna configurations (What is MIMO?), let’s now take a look at one of the most commonly used transmission scheme nowadays, namely Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). But, before we explain why do we […]

The time has come to present our youngest initiative, a training course that binds together the two worlds – “Wireless” and “Networking”. Why this training is different? This unique course combines the theoretical foundations for the wireless transmission and Wireless LAN standards, together with the practical aspects ranging from measurement, planning and troubleshooting activities, to […]

WiFi has been considered as an offload mechanism since the introduction of LTE in 3GPP Rel-8. However, the initial inter-working between the two Radio Access Technologies (RATs) was very loose, with WiFi connected to the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) with the help of add-on functions (such as ANDSF hidden deep in the network) making suggestions for […]

With the recent hype on 5G, an interesting question could be raised, namely: will a mobile system finally become an alternative to fixed access? Can we really answer that question at this point? As of now, we cannot say for sure what 5G will become, since its still being discussed, the requirements specification is ongoing, and the actual […]