802.11ax WiFi

Broadcom releases three new chips that support 802.11ax WiFi standard.

10:27 21 August 2017

This week, Broadcom has announced the release of new chips that support “Max WiFi”, the company’s term for 802.11ax, the 6th generation of WiFi. Using these chips, a user will enjoy about 4x faster download speed, 6x faster upload speed, 4x better coverage and up to 7x battery life when compared to today’s 802.11ac products.

 

The following features are what make the new chips more powerful:

 

·       OFDMA – 802.11ax features orthogonal frequency division multiple access, which comes from the world of LTE. It slices the channels into smaller sub-channels, each with a different frequency. Whenever there is a gap in transmission, a different client can fill in the spot.

 

·       Target Wake Time (TWT) – One of the reasons why battery life suffers in client devices is because they are constantly checking to see if the AP is available and ready. With TWT, the APs provide a schedule of when to wake.

 

·       Spatial frequency re-use – A feature that improves channel capacity efficiency by enabling the APs to make smarter decision on when to transmit data.

 

 

Broadcom released three chips for different uses cases, namely: the BCM43684 (for residential Wi-Fi), the BCM43694 (for enterprise APs), and BCM4375 (for smart phones).