WIFI 6 Network Standard

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Nov 24, 2024

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1 WIFI 6 Network Standard Student Name Course Name Professor Name January 07, 2023

2 Abstract Another new amendment to the Wi-Fi standard, every new generation of Wi-Fi brings an opportunity to pause and consider the transformational changes that will be affecting us in the coming years. Today, Wi-Fi networks already experience bandwidth-intensive media content and multiple Wi-Fi devices per user. Moving forward, networks will face a continued dramatic increase in the number of devices, a tripling of the total global IP traffic, and a diverse range of new technologies that will all heavily rely on Wi-Fi. As with previous generations, Wi-Fi 6 (also known as 802.11ax) will improve high density performance and provide faster throughput. In addition, this new generation of Wi-Fi will augment customary speed and density improvements with new capabilities designed for technology trends of the future. IoT connections will represent more than half of all global connected devices by 2022. Virtual and augmented reality network traffic is poised to grow twelve-fold by 2022. Wi-Fi networks of the future need to be nimble and efficient to accommodate increased client density, high throughput requirements, and a diversity of new applications. Wi-Fi 6 offers several new improvements to make it the highest performing set of wireless protocols ever developed. Not only will Wi-Fi 6 boost overall performance, but it is designed to perform efficiently in real-world scenarios. New features such as OFDMA, uplink MU-MIMO, TWT, BSS color, and new modulation schemes all work together to allow end users to experience always-on connectivity without bottlenecks or performance degradation.

3 Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. 2 Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Background/Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Problem Statement and Purpose of Research ................................................................................... 5 Relevance and Significance ................................................................................................................ 5 Research Questions ........................................................................................................................... 6 Barriers and Issues ............................................................................................................................. 6

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4 WIFI 6 Network Standard Chapter 1 Background/Introduction Introduction Since 1999, Wi-Fi has evolved rapidly to provide significantly higher throughput and performance. In 2013, 802.11n handed the baton to 802.11ac by providing users with higher speed and higher reliability while conserving power for mobile devices. Over the last several years, 802.11ac Wave 2 has improved maximum data rates beyond 1 Gbps. While 802.11ac Wave 1 and Wave 2 provided significantly increased throughput over older standards, the ability to get reliable multigigabit performance and spectral efficiency was still missing from the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard and required an additional amendment. The development of the 802.11ax amendment started in 2013, as a group of technical experts came together to discuss the challenges that Wi-Fi might face in coming years. Wi-Fi was contending with being a victim of its own success, as its use became ubiquitous. Experts noted the projected increase of Wi-Fi devices such as mobile phones, consumer electronics, and IoT devices. With more devices, Wi-Fi would face increasing interference and decreased performance. The group saw a need to get legacy devices, IoT devices, and high-throughput devices to all work together efficiently. The task group discussed problem statements and solutions, ultimately outlining the requirements for Wi-Fi 6, also known as High Efficiency WLAN. This new generation of Wi-Fi will be intelligent enough to enable the dense and pervasive wireless environments of the future. Wireless traffic will significantly grow in the next few years. Cisco expects 71% mobile connectivity by 2023. The prime use cases of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are industrial automation with the motion flexibility of actuators, sensors,

5 controllers, mobile users, dense networks including a large number of users, healthcare for patient monitoring and diagnosis, etc. Dense networks have a high density of users and access points, generating a large volume of interference. They require efficient spatial frequency reuse. The IEEE 802.11 standard fulfills these demands (in the literature, IEEE 802.11 and Wi-Fi are used interchangeably and we follow this convention). Wi-Fi is an unlicensed technology that focuses on the Physical (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers. It is suitable for mobile and high-speed Internet access and is mainly deployed for enterprise and home networks. The number of public Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to reach 628 million in 2023 [1] as many infrastructures rely on Wi-Fi technology. The IEEE 802.11 standard introduced in 1997 was followed by major amendments (see Table 1): 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11ax, and 802.11be. They are considered generations and are also denoted as Wi-Fi 1 to Wi-Fi 7. The prevalent Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), meets neither the real-time and high-reliability demands of high-quality multimedia applications nor the energy efficiency of Internet of Things (IoT) networks. It cannot simultaneously support a large number of users with high Quality of Service (QoS) and suffers from inefficient power management. Problem Statement and Purpose of Research Dealing with Wi-Fi 6 mean that our work process becomes slightly more expensive or takes more time than before. Perhaps. But it will still be cost-effective, and thus the whole point of analog IP reuse will still be valid. But, like Wi-Fi, we are constantly improving. We have been able to reduce the number of iterations it takes to get from our starting point all the way to eventual layout migration – and we are continuing that improvement process. We also have a lot of relevant experience to draw on and build on, most notably in dual band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This will help us to help our customers to find the cost-effective approach

6 they need, which is our aim in every job we take on – even when it involves a brand-new evolution of Wi-Fi. Relevance and Significance Despite the challenges in the changing wireless landscape, users expect wireless deployments to be pervasive, and to support high capacity and a high density of clients. Wi-Fi 6 is designed to meet these changing needs — performance that will exceed 802.11ac Wave 2 by over 3-4 times, support for higher density with more efficient airtime, support for a higher scale of client devices, and significant battery saving. While Wi-Fi 6 will be able to deliver theoretical data-rate growth of around 37%, its largest benefit is the ability to deliver high- efficiency performance in real-world environments. As the number of clients increase, Wi-Fi 6 will be able to sustain far more consistent data throughput than previous 802.11n and 802.11ac amendments. There are controlled environments with a very small amount of clients where previous generations of Wi-Fi may provide higher throughput. This is due to the longer frames and wider guard intervals of 802.11ax, which help provide resiliency. In addition to consistent real-world data throughput, Wi-Fi 6 comes with the additional benefits of wider coverage ranges, better reliability, better IoT operation, and more. Wi-Fi 6 will incorporate numerous other capabilities in addition to the eight detailed above. Another goal of the Wi-Fi 6 task group was to address improved performance in outdoor environments. This is accomplished in Wi-Fi 6 with a new packet structure to allow for more robust communication in complex outdoor environments. Research Questions Barriers and Issues While upgrading to Wi-Fi 6 is a wonderful idea for speeding up networking for your business, it also comes with some challenges. As with any new technology, the first issue is often the lack of compatible devices. Still, most Wi-Fi 6 devices will be backwards

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7 compatible so they will work with existing devices. Another typical roadblock to adopting new technology is cost. The equipment and personnel cost for upgrading from 802.11ac (Wi- Fi 5) to 802.11ax (Wi-Fi-6) may cause many businesses to wait before jumping in. Businesses may wish to weigh what they would gain in efficiencies against the cost of upgrading to Wi-Fi 6. Also, to take full advantage of the benefits of Wi-Fi 6, businesses migrating to the new Wi-Fi standard should first have the right physical infrastructure in place. IT decision makers need to make sure that the business’s wireless network planning and operation consider equipment and infrastructure requirements to take full advantage of Wi-Fi 6 benefits. This can mean upgrading to fiber connection. Further, Wi-Fi 6 coordinates with 5G cellular technology, so businesses will need equipment that can use both technologies. Wi-Fi 6 comes with some great benefits, from improving communication between APs and devices, as well as limiting interference. While the benefits are wonderful to incorporate, it is important to weigh the challenges before incorporating Wi-Fi 6 into your business.

8 Chapter 2 Review of the Literature 802.11ax is the name assigned by the IEEE 802.11 standards organization of to the new- generation WLAN standard. To facilitate the popularization of the new technology, the WFA decided in October 2018 to name Wi-Fi generations in “Wi-Fi + number” format. When users use Wi-Fi, they can know the technology standard and rate level according to the number, just as they know the cellular network standard they use according to the 3G/4G sticker on their mobile phones. In the new format, Wi-Fi 5 corresponds to 802.11ac and Wi-Fi 6 to 802.11ax. On September 16, 2019, the WFA announced the launch of the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 program. Soon after that, ZTE's CPE product, the ZXHN F2886S, passed Wi-Fi 6 certification, becoming the industry’s first XGS-PON ONT that completed Wi-Fi 6 certification and supports 10GE and IoT interfaces as well as the first ONT from China that passed WPA3 security testing. The ZXHN F2886S has won full recognition from authoritative institutions for its network capacity, bandwidth use efficiency, and Wi-Fi security protection. It has become a frontrunner and benchmark in the industry. The total amount of internet traffic from 2017-2022 will be higher than in the previous 32 years of the internet. Wi-Fi will be the transport mechanism for more than half of that traffic. In addition to existing bandwidth challenges, an influx of new Wi-Fi 6 mobile devices is expected to hit networks in late 2019 and 2020. The data traffic per smartphone is expected to increase by ten times from 2016 to 2022. Adding to Wi-Fi data rate requirements, 5G networks will be offloading significant amounts of traffic to Wi-Fi. These developments will cause challenges for Wi-Fi networks, which are already dealing with a steady influx of increasing clients, higher client density, and high throughput applications. Bandwidth-

9 intensive 4K video is expected to grow from three percent of all IP traffic in 2017 to twentytwo percent in 2022. 4K video already challenges networks with 15 to 18 Mbps throughput, but 8K streaming video is coming online as well, consuming roughly 1 Gbps of throughput. Augmented and virtual reality applications will have increasing use, and consume anywhere from 600 Mbps to 1 Gbps of traffic. These new bandwidth challenges will require worldwide Wi-Fi connection speeds to increase 2.2x between 2017 and 2022. The next several years will see a 50% increase in networked devices per person, resulting in an average of 3.6 connected devices per person. As device counts increase, users are also expecting a more rich and seamless wireless experience. However, laptops, wearables, and mobile phones will cause significant interference and degraded performance for the rest of the network. In addition to the steady stream of increased clients, network admins will have to account for dynamic changes as mobile users physically move locations more often. As multiple mobile clients move through spaces that have overlapping coverage from wireless stations (STA), traditional collision avoidance protocols begin to decrease in efficiency. This effect is particularly pronounced at higher data rates and modulation schemes that are more susceptible to noise. With four times as many Wi-Fi connected devices as humans on the planet, the world’s population is more connected than ever before. The days of workers tethered to work stations around centralized company data centers are on the decline. The previous five Wi-Fi generations assisted this untethering transition, and the next generation looks to push the bounds of mobility even further. WiFi 6 will lay the groundwork for the growing use of applications like collaborative HD video streaming, augmented reality on the manufacturing floor, virtual reality entertainment, and IoT. Internet-of-things devices will represent more than half of all global connected devices and connections by 2022, and 80% of new IoT projects will be wireless. IoT devices are provided benefits with Wi-Fi 6, potentially allowing

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10 three times better power efficiency, and additional spectral efficiency. This will lower the barrier of development for warehouse robots, wireless-dependent asset tracking, sophisticated sensors, and more. Despite the challenges in the changing wireless landscape, users expect wireless deployments to be pervasive, and to support high capacity and a high density of clients. Wi-Fi 6 is designed to meet these changing needs — performance that will exceed 802.11ac Wave 2 by over 3-4 times, support for higher density with more efficient airtime, support for a higher scale of client devices, and significant battery saving. While Wi-Fi 6 will be able to deliver theoretical data-rate growth of around 37%, its largest benefit is the ability to deliver high- efficiency performance in real-world environments. As the number of clients increase, Wi-Fi 6 will be able to sustain far more consistent data throughput than previous 802.11n and 802.11ac amendments. There are controlled environments with a very small amount of clients where previous generations of Wi-Fi may provide higher throughput. This is due to the longer frames and wider guard intervals of 802.11ax, which help provide resiliency. In addition to consistent real-world data throughput, Wi-Fi 6 comes with the additional benefits of wider coverage ranges, better reliability, better IoT operation, and more. One of the biggest benefits of 802.11ax is the transition from Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) towards Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). With 802.11n and 802.11ac, OFDM offers the ability to divide bandwidth into multiple frequency sub channels. With 802.11ax, OFDMA enhances the network efficiency by multiplexing users in frequency and space, minimizing contention for wireless medium. The increasing amount of connected devices, such as IoT devices, can place a strain on APs when trying to connect along with a host of other devices. In previous generations of Wi-Fi, a small transmission from a single client would be able to monopolize an entire channel. OFDMA allows more efficient transmission of data to multiple devices, allowing for a 20 MHz channel to be split into small

11 resource units (RUs) or sub-channels. An 802.11ax AP can use the entire 20 MHz channel to send data to a single client or split the channel to send data to 9 clients using 9 RUs. Additionally, the data can also be modulated using MCS10 or 11 to increase throughput. This is predicted to have transformational effects on Wi-Fi efficiency, as well as chipset design for IoT devices. New chipsets can be designed more elegantly, as they no longer have to operate on 40 MHz or 80 MHz channels. Even with 802.11ac Wave 2 networks, customers that deploy high-density wireless deployments with 5 GHz do not need to configure 80 MHz channels but instead can choose the narrower 40 MHz or standardize on 20 MHz in order to focus on capacity and reuse of channels. With 802.11ax, customers get the ability to divide the channel width even smaller slots such as 2 MHz to tackle transmission to multiple IoT devices. Since most traffic consists of downloads (from AP to clients), downlink OFDMA is of particular interest for most deployments. It allows more efficient aggregation of data to multiple stations. These capabilities will be beneficial to allow a diversity of applications and devices with different needs to work efficiently together. Someone who is posting on Twitter can now simultaneously send data within a channel that is also sending high-definition video. Instead of boosting the speed for individual devices, Wi-Fi 6 is all about improving the network when a bunch of devices are connected. That’s an important goal, and it arrives at an important time: when Wi-Fi 5 came out, the average US household had about five Wi-Fi devices in it. Now, homes have nine Wi-Fi devices on average, and various firms have predicted we’ll hit 50 on average within several years. Those added devices take a toll on your network. Your router can only communicate with so many devices at once, so the more gadgets demanding Wi-Fi, the more the network overall is going to slow down. Wi-Fi 6 introduces some new technologies to help mitigate the issues that come with putting dozens of Wi-Fi devices on a single network. It lets routers communicate with more devices at once, lets routers send data to multiple devices in the same broadcast, and lets Wi-Fi devices

12 schedule check-ins with the router. Together, those features should keep connections strong even as more and more devices start demanding data. At first, Wi-Fi 6 connections aren’t likely to be substantially faster. A single Wi-Fi 6 laptop connected to a Wi-Fi 6 router may only be slightly faster than a single Wi-Fi 5 laptop connected to a Wi-Fi 5 router. The story starts to change as more and more devices get added onto your network. Where current routers might start to get overwhelmed by requests from a multitude of devices, Wi-Fi 6 routers are designed to more effectively keep all those devices up to date with the data they need. Each of those devices’ speeds won’t necessarily be faster than what they can reach today on a high-quality network, but they’re more likely to maintain those top speeds even in busier environments. You can imagine this being useful in a home where one person is streaming Netflix, another is playing a game, someone else is video chatting, and a whole bunch of smart gadgets — a door lock, temperature sensors, light switches, and so on — are all checking in at once. The top speeds of those devices won’t necessarily be boosted, but the speeds you see in typical, daily use likely will get an upgrade. Exactly how fast that upgrade is, though, will depend on how many devices are on your network and just how demanding those devices are. The 802.11ax amendment to the Wi-Fi standard is still being ratified as of mid-2019, and likely will not be finalized by the Wi-Fi Alliance and IEEE until late 2019. There may be additional ratifications if changes are made to the standard, similar to the 802.11ac ratification process. Timing of an upgrade will depend on individual network needs, as administrators will need to consider their upgrade cycle, and the need for additional throughput or density headroom. Network administrators may want to prepare in advance for the upcoming deluge of Wi-Fi 6 compatible devices by tuning their networks after accounting for the new capabilities like MU-MIMO and OFDMA. 802.11ax clients started hitting the marketplace in early 2019, and will continue throughout the end of 2019 and 2020. The

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13 critical inflection point where most of shipping devices will be Wi-Fi 6 compatible will likely occur sometime towards the latter half of 2020. Device manufacturers will likely be highly incentivized to push new Wi-Fi 6 clients to consumers, as they can market the new power saving benefits due to TWT and increased efficiency. Since 802.11ax APs are backwards- compatible with previous 802.11a/b/g/n/ac client devices, administrators can begin upgrading their wireless networks now if throughput and density requirements are paramount. While performance improvements can be recognized immediately with 8x8 APs, the vast majority of impact will be felt as new 802.11ax clients enter the market in 2019 and 2020. There are two key technologies speeding up Wi-Fi 6 connections: MU-MIMO and OFDMA. MU-MIMO, which stands for “multi-user, multiple input, multiple output,” is already in use in modern routers and devices, but Wi-Fi 6 upgrades it. The technology allows a router to communicate with multiple devices at the same time, rather than broadcasting to one device, and then the next, and the next. Right now, MU-MIMO allows routers to communicate with four devices at a time. Wi-Fi 6 will allow devices to communicate with up to eight. You can think of adding MU-MIMO connections like adding delivery trucks to a fleet, says Kevin Robinson, marketing leader for the Wi-Fi Alliance, an internationally backed tech-industry group that oversees the implementation of Wi-Fi. “You can send each of those trucks in different directions to different customers,” Robinson says. “Before, you had four trucks to fill with goods and send to four customers. With Wi-Fi 6, you now have eight trucks.” The other new technology, OFDMA, which stands for “orthogonal frequency division multiple access,” allows one transmission to deliver data to multiple devices at once. Extending the truck metaphor, Robinson says that OFDMA essentially allows one truck to carry goods to be delivered to multiple locations. “With OFDMA, the network can look at a truck, see ‘I’m only allocating 75 percent of that truck and this other customer is kind of on the way,’” and then fill up that remaining space with a delivery for the second customer, he

14 says. In practice, this is all used to get more out of every transmission that carries a Wi-Fi signal from a router to your device. Traffic asymmetry has already been identified as a key problem in legacy Wi-Fi. Indeed, the stations and access point have the same priority for medium access, whereas the access point transmits more packets. The inefficiency of trigger-based OFDMA while the Wi-Fi 6 access point was competing with legacy stations for channel access. To be able to give more transmission opportunities to the access point, they proposed to use different EDCA parameter sets for the access point and legacy stations. Reliability and data delivery are also critical for providing QoS. Cyclic Resource Assignment (CRA) targets real-time applications (RTA) to meet the critical latency and reliability constraints. Primarily, it randomly schedules stations and assigns 26-tone RUs to them. Therefore, it can schedule a large number of stations in parallel. In the case of collision, the access point specifies an RU to the stations to transmit without collision. To predict data stream deadlines on the access point, the access point regularly retrieves the stations’ queue sizes through BSR. This provides a realistic approximation of the stations’ deadlines and then assigns the RUs to the stations based on the estimated deadlines. Thereby, it minimizes packet loss significantly.

WIFI 6 Network Standard

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