Kevin Krewell, Principal Analyst, Tirias Research
EETimes (1/2/2017 02:20 PM EST)
As we approach the yearly post-New Year's Eve torture that is CES, one piece of good news is Wi-Fi is about to get better.
A new revision of the standard focused on supporting greater client density should begin to roll out in 2017 – 802.11ax. At CES 2017, we expect to hear about silicon support for 802.11ax and maybe see a few access points supporting it.
Current state-of-the-art wireless routers are based on the 802.11ac Wave-2 standard with multi user (MU) MIMO and 4x4 antenna arrays. They enable spatial reuse to minimize channel sharing among multiple simultaneous users. The marketing for these systems is typically based on their peak data rates to clients, but their most important benefit is increased capacity and improved user experience in crowded networks.