Many emerging technologies will profoundly change our lives – Bluetooth 5, 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and quantum computing. Why? Because our wearable and mobile devices are going to be able to generate and process more data than ever before, advancing user experiences in ways we could only dream about when watching sci-fi series’ like Star Trek.
For this article I am more interested in Wi-Fi 6, what it will do, why it is important to me now and if it will allow me to teleport? Don’t get too excited about teleportation, Wi-Fi 6 isn’t for that. Wi-Fi 6 (or 802.11ax) is built with IoT in mind and it is here. It will enable more ‘Things’ to be connect to more ‘Things’ with faster speeds. In fact, Wi-Fi 6 speeds are expected to range between four to ten times current Wi-Fi speeds with less power requirements.
“The Wi-Fi 6 power efficiency improvements are made possible by a technology called Target Wake Time (TWT). TWT enables devices to determine when and how frequently they wake to send and receive data. This enhanced sleep feature significantly improves battery life for devices which is particularly important for IoT. Target Wake Time enables negotiation and specific times to access the ‘Thing’. If there is less traffic, we also gain the added benefit of an optimised spectrum and better Wi-Fi user experience.”
Wi-Fi 6 has a managed approach for when devices send data which schedules them, so they don’t clash with each other. This gives better resource utilisation and an impressive increase in efficiency.