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Network Infrastructure Magazine | Wednesday, June 29, 2022
The pioneer of consumer connectivity, the most recent version of WiFi, enhances user accessibility and throughput while delivering technical benefits for IoT deployments.
Fremont, CA: Industrial WiFi 6 products are just beginning to become available on the market. In a few years, however, short-range wireless, WiFi 6, and cellular IoT will work together to construct the vast, resilient, and low-latency networks required for the IoT to fulfill its promise.
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WiFi 6 for IoT
WiFi version IEEE 802.11ax, marketed as WiFi 6, promises to address the shortcomings that have hindered the technology's widespread adoption of the Internet of Things. WiFi 6 was approved by the WiFi Alliance earlier this year and was designed to meet the criteria of public and industrial dense deployments. Improvements to throughput and spectral efficiency, which allow for more network connections while preserving service quality, are the most prominent aspects of the current version.
Using the new orthogonal frequency-division, multiple-access (OFDMA) capability, for instance, devices can share channel bandwidth with other network devices to boost network capacity. In addition, these technological advancements allow for speedier responses from and to connected devices. Whereas previous versions of WiFi failed to manage sensor networks with more than a few devices, WiFi 6 can manage huge sensor networks with hundreds of units with ease. WiFi 6 also provides a significant technical improvement for smart-home and smart-industry applications. The development, known as "target wake time" (TWT), represents a major improvement over previous generations of Wi-power-saving Fi's efforts.
Client devices negotiate wake-up timings with access points (APs) when utilizing the TWT technology. Therefore, customers do not need to be awake to keep wireless connectivity. Consequently, an AP can consolidate large groups of client requests into fewer triggered transmit chances. The advantages include more efficient, contention-free channel access and significant client-device power savings of up to 80 percent in similar applications. This makes long-lasting battery-powered Internet of Things devices more viable.
WiFi 6 also provides IoT sensors with a direct link to the cloud through routers without the need for additional data subscriptions. In addition, the technology's superior throughput compared to previous short-range wireless systems enables novel use cases, such as wireless security cameras and high-definition video doorbells. The extra throughput can also be used to augment Bluetooth when transferring huge quantities of data, such as music streaming in wearables.
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