What's the Difference Between Wifi 6 vs Wifi 6E?

Wi-Fi 6 devices were available for most of last year, but the Wi-Fi Alliance didn’t begin its Wi-Fi 6 certification program until September 2019. And just as customers began to do it. At CES 2020, the Wi-Fi Alliance unveiled a new Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 6E, to replace Wi-Fi 6.

Wi-Fi 6E might be considered an incremental upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) before Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) is ready for deployment, but in actuality, it is an evolution. a revolutionary shift Wi-Fi 6E is about opening up the 6GHz band to Wi-Fi, which Broadcom describes as the biggest revolutionary benefit to Wi-Fi consumers in the last twenty years.

Let us now look at how these two criteria differ.

What’s the Difference Between Wifi 6 vs Wifi 6E?

Unlike earlier Wi-Fi standards, Wi-Fi 6 is primarily concerned with enhancing Wi-Fi reliability in busy areas. While peak download and upload speeds have improved, the major goal is to give a dependable internet connection to a greater number of connected devices in your house.

The number of linked devices has expanded dramatically, and IDC expects it to exceed 1.3 billion in the next years. This growth in connected devices poses a difficulty that Wi-Fi 6 has previously addressed with solutions like as 1024QAM and OFDMA.

Without diving into technical specifics, the goal is to allow more concurrent connections, make better use of existing bands, and minimize power usage. Congestion in the 2GHz to 5GHz spectrum, on the other hand, has resulted in a spectrum deficit for Wi-Fi 6 to reach its full potential. This is a Wi-Fi 6E address issue.

Wi-Fi 6E effectively raises Wi-Fi band 6 to 6GHz. Wi-Fi 6E devices, on the other hand, will be capable of supporting Wi-Fi 6 in the 6GHz band.

Wi-Fi 6E means Highway 160 MHz

Even when not using the 160 MHz band, Wi-Fi 6 achieves up to 4x better speeds in busy areas. However, a 160MHz highway is necessary to reach the full potential of Wi-Fi 6 and achieve gigabit speeds, or for applications such as 8K streaming.

Two to three 160 MHz channels are now accessible for Wi-Fi 6 devices, although they are also shared with previous generation devices that use subsets of the 160 MHz (20 MHz) spectrum. , 40 MHz, and so on), which reduces transmission throughout the 160 MHz Band.

Aside from slower traffic, devices must avoid Radars that use the same frequency by employing Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS). In truth, most Wi-Fi 6 routers support the 160 MHz band, but it is fully deactivated.

Furthermore, mobile devices are not permitted to use the 160 MHz spectrum when operating as an access point. To put it another way, your phone cannot use the 160 MHz band while acting as a hotspot and connecting AR and VR devices.

To solve these issues, the Wi-Fi Alliance has requested that the 6 GHz spectrum be made available for unlicensed usage. This would release up to 7 contiguous 160MHz channels, which are required to fully exploit the promise of not just Wi-Fi 6, but also Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) and eventual 5G NR.

What are the potential uses of Wi-Fi 6E?

Wi-Fi 6E will significantly boost throughput and significantly reduce Wi-Fi latency for short-range communications. As a result, it will be suited for some demanding applications and use cases, such as: