Tippner 1

Nicholas Tippner
CST 311 Extra Credit
18 June 2017
Development in Wi-Fi

In the book assigned for this course, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, the

book speaks upon the “relatively new” standard developed for 802.11 wireless networks,

802.11n, that innovatively used multi-input multi-output antennas to transmit and receive

multiple signals. As of this date, that technology has been greatly improved upon and it has led

to the current 802.11 standard, 802.11ac, which was made official in 2013 (Linksys, n.d.).

However, most people with a shared wireless network know that in an age of 4K Netflix

streaming and 30-person conference calls, the current standard may not be enough for high-usage

users in a high-population network. This problem will potentially be solved with the

development of the new 802.11 wireless standard, 802.11ax. 802.11ax will improve on the

efficiency and speed of 802.11ac, and is due to be released for routers at the end of this year, as

well as for laptops in 2018(Ngo, 2017).

To expand on what exactly 802.11ax is, it’s an 802.11 standard for wireless LAN

technology that’s currently in development. Like all the other 802.11 standards, 802.11ax is a set

of media access control and physical layer specifications for implementing wireless networks on

the 2.5GHz and 5GHz bands, and make use of the Ethernet protocol and CSMA/SA (Chaskar

2016). Since 802.11 standards are just guidelines around making WLAN devices, you could

theoretically design a router that doesn’t follow the standards. However, this would make it

incompatible with any other device that doesn’t match your own standards, which is why

standards for WLAN technology were implemented, so that all WLAN devices made would be

compatible with each other. 802.11 standards are implemented anywhere that uses a wireless

connection, such as routers, mobile devices, and laptops (Krose & Ross, 2013).
 Tippner 2
While 802.11ax is going to improve on the speeds of the 802.11ac standard, its focus is to

increase spectral efficiency on networks that have a high number of users, so that when a user

transfers a large amount of data over a wireless network, other users on that network aren’t

impacted heavily. However, while the focus may not be speed, it will still quadruple the capacity

of the network, compared to the previous standard 802.11ac. It allows multiple users with

different bandwidth needs to access the network simultaneously, and schedules them so that they

don’t compete and uploads don’t clash with each other. It also allows devices to negotiate when

and often they wake up to send or receive data, which substantially improves the battery life of

devices using this standard (Qualcomm, n.d.).

In addition to using MIMO (multi input multi output), the technology first put in place by

802.11n, 802.11ax also makes use of the previous MU-OFDMA (multi-user orthogonal

frequency-division multiple access) technique to improve spectral efficiency. It also introduces

the use of the new technology, MU-MIMO (multi user multi input multi output), which improves

how network speeds are divided among the users of a wireless network. Some other technologies

used by 802.11ax include uplink resource schedulers, TWT (target wakeup time), and 1024

QAM modulation encoding (National Instruments, n.d.).

802.11ax makes use of all these new technologies to be a better version of 802.11ac.

Using the improved multi-user MIMO, 802.11ax can make routers steer wireless beams directly

at the right users at the right times, and allows for both downloads and uploads, whereas with

802.11ac you could only do uploads with direct beaming. The use of MU-OFDMA makes it so

that instead of users having to take turns broadcasting and listening on each channel, up to 30

users will be able to share each channel. Since OFDMA is used, it also makes 802.11ax

backwards compatible, where 802.11ac was not. With 1024 QAM encoding, as well as
 Tippner 3
combining the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, more channels can be created for data and more data

can be allowed per packet. Finally, uplink scheduling and wake-time scheduling allow for

routers to tell clients when they can listen for uploads and when they can take a nap until they

have time for chat. The former takes the delay out of waiting for a free channel, and the latter

saves battery life (Segan, 2017).

These improvements address the problems caused by high-usage users in a high-density

network. When it comes to the current standard, it’s simply not efficient enough to deal with an

office building full of office workings needing to frequently host video conferences and transfer

thousands of documents from one host to another, or apartment complexes full of Netflix-

watching, multiplayer game-playing, always online families of four to five. 802.11ax looks to

solve the bottleneck between a fast internet connection and a slow wireless network divided

among multiple people by improving the capacity of a wireless network operating under its

standard. 802.11ax also looks to solve efficiency issues and battery life issues for mobile

devices, since currently the 802.11ac standard causes battery drain on mobile devices where the

Wi-Fi is turned on (Linksys, n.d.).

Using the previously mentioned technologies, 802.11ax can solve the problems of speed,

capacity, efficiency, and battery life. With improved multi-user MIMO that allows for uploads

and downloads, as well as the use of 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels combined with 1024 QAM

encoding, the speed of connections on a 802.11ax wireless network is vastly increased. Multi-

user OFDMA allowing for up to 30 users to share a channel, as well as uplink scheduling taking

delay from waiting for a free channel, improves capacity and efficiency. Finally, wake-time

scheduling allows clients to take a nap and schedules a wake-up time for when they’re able to
 Tippner 4
chat, and this improves battery life as the client on a mobile device won’t have to stay awake for

extended periods of time.

The major strength that 802.11ax has is that it is, compared to previous wireless network

standards that focused on speed only, the first wireless network standard to focus on connection

speed, Wi-Fi capacity, and network efficiency. This is important because we don’t just want

faster internet speeds these days, all the speed in the world doesn’t matter if it’s being divided

among enough people to bring it down to the speed of a wireless connection a decade ago. That’s

why capacity and efficiency are important strengths for a wireless network standard to have.

Another strength of 802.11ax is that it is backwards compatible, and while this is a trait shared

with many previous wireless network standards, it’s important because new devices using this

wireless network standard need to be able to function with older devices not using this standard

(Ngo, 2017).

Unfortunately, though 802.11ax has improved a lot on the technologies introduced by

802.11n and 802.11ac, it still has some drawbacks. Due to the use of OFDMA, 802.11ax systems

are susceptible to frequency and clock offsets, which means that receiving signals can be shifted

in frequency and can result in inter-carrier interference. Good performance for multi-user

OFDMA requires extremely precise frequency synchronization and clock offset correction.

Additionally, since the Access Point acts as the clock and frequency reference, it’s hard to test

receiver sensitivity of 802.11ax devices. Fortunately, there are ways to manage these problems in

an efficient manner (National Instruments, n.d.).

Wireless standards apply to any wireless device that wishes to claim it has the capabilities

set forth by a wireless standard, as well as being compatible with other devices that utilize that

wireless standard. Currently, only two companies have announced chips using the 802.11ax
 Tippner 5
wireless standard, and those are Qualcomm (Qualcomm, n.d.) and Quantenna. No company has

announced devise that would use the 802.11ax standard yet. Quantenna’s chips, the QSR10G-

AX and the QSR5G-AX, are both designed for use in routers and access points (Quantenna

2016). The two chips announced by Qualcomm, the IPQ8074 and the QCA6290, also make use

of the 802.11ax standard, with the IPQ8074 designed for routers and gateways, and the

QCA6290 designed for mobile devices. So, we might be seeing routers and mobile devices with

802.11ax implemented as soon as the end of this year (Ngo, 2017).

Since 802.11ax will be a hardware upgrade rather than a software upgrade, it might be

awhile before we start noticing improvements in networks with better hardware, as both the

router and the client will need to support the wireless standard. Additionally, the nature of the

new standard requires that there are as many 802.11ax clients on the 802.11ax network as

possible, since if only the network is 802.11ax, then the improvement in connection speed will

not be noticed as it will be bottlenecked at the client (Segan, 2017). A final note, the speed of a

wireless router depends entirely on the speed of the internet connection it is attached to. In areas

where wireless infrastructure is poor, such as rural and heavily wooded or mountainous areas,

then any improvements to wireless standards are made somewhat irrelevant, as the connection

speed will be bottlenecked at the other end.

In conclusion, the new 802.11ax wireless standard will make massive improvements over

the current version, 802.11ac. It will make wireless networks faster, more efficient, and have

more capacity using MU-MIMO and MU-OFDMA technologies. These technologies allow

multiple users to share channels and have wireless beams steered directly at them for efficient

downloads and uploads. Qualcomm and Quantenna are at the forefront of developing hardware
 Tippner 6
that makes use of these wireless standards, with Qualcomm announcing a chip for mobile

devices that we could see by the end of 2017.

 Tippner 7
References

Chaskar, Hemant. (2016, July 9). 802.11ax: Optimistic CSMA for Efficient Channel Reuse in

WiFi. Retrieved June 18, 2017, from http://blog.mojonetworks.com/802.11ax-optimistic-

csma-for-efficient-channel-reuse-in-wifi

Kurose, James, Ross, Keith. (2013). Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach.

Linksys. (n.d.). Why Choose 802.11ad Over 802.11ax? Retrieved June 18, 2017, from

http://www.linksys.com/us/r/resource-center/80211ad-vs-80211ax/

National Instruments. (2017, April 20). Introduction to 802.11ax High-Efficiency Wireless.

Retrieved June 18, 2017, from http://www.ni.com/white-paper/53150/en/

Ngo, Dong. (2017, February 13). Qualcomm's new 802.11ax chips will ramp up your Wi-Fi.

Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://www.cnet.com/news/qualcomm-new-802-11ax-

chips-will-ramp-up-your-wi-fi/

Qualcomm. (n.d.) 802.11ax. Retrieved June 18, 2017, from

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/features/80211ax

Quantenna. (2016, October 17). Quantenna Announces World’s First 802.11ax Wi-Fi Solution.

Retrieved June 18, 2017, from http://www.quantenna.com/2016/10/quantenna-

announces-worlds-first-802-11ax-wi-fi-solution/

Segan, Sascha. (2017, February 22). What Is 802.11ax? The Solution to Crowded Wi-Fi.

Retrieved June 18, 2017, from http://www.pcmag.com/article/351868/what-is-802-11ax-

the-solution-to-crowded-wi-fi