Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 adds support for uplink multi-user MIMO, improves power management

The Wi-Fi Alliance has just announced Wi-Fi 6 CERTIFIED Release 2 with new features that support increasing device and traffic density, and improve power management with Wi-Fi devices and applications.

There are two main changes to the standard:

• Support for uplink multi-user multiple input, multiple output (multi-user MIMO) which will help with video conferencing, faster uploads, more reliable gaming, and IoT use cases.
• Power management features that will mostly provide benefit smart home, smart city, and Industrial IoT (IIoT) environments
  • Broadcast target wake time (TWT)
  • Extended sleep time
  • Dynamic multi-user spatial multiplexing power save (SMPS)

That means there are now three Wi-Fi 6 standards with the original WiFi 6, WiFi 6E, and the new WiFi 6 Release 2. The good news is that the new Release appears to be backward compatible with both WiFI 6 and WiFi 6E and several companies provided quotes for the press release saying how grateful they were to have their hardware selected as WiFi 6 Release 2 test bed devices. Those includes:

• Broadcom Wi-Fi 6E access point and client device reference designs
• Infineon AIROC Wi-Fi family of products
• Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210
• Maxlinear WAV600-2 product family
• MediaTek Filogic family
• Unspecified chips from Qualcomm, Broadcom, NXP, and others

So I assume existing WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E routers and devices can just be updated to WiFi 6 Release 2 with a simple firmware upgrade provided the vendor provides it.

Via Liliputing

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