The Wi-Fi Alliance and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has recently announced that they have begun development on the successor of 802.11ac, 802.11ax. This new wireless network standard will put more focus on individual device speed rather than overall network capacity. IEEE has set a top priority to increase speed to device by 4X, possibly pushing individual connections into the gigabit range.
Currently 802.11ac Wi-Fi routers and devices claim gigabit-plus numbers, but this represents the overall capacity the network can support. It would take very rare circumstances for a individual device to actually connect at these speeds. Currently individual connection speeds are topping out at 300 Mbps, while the average connection speed is much slower.
In order to accomplish this, IEEE is developing a new radio technology called MIMO-OFDA (Multi Input-Multi Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. The idea behind this is to develop a more powerful and efficient radio that can harness more bits into the same transmission. This would create a bigger pipe to the individual devices, which will increase overall network capacity and performance.
But don’t expect anything from 802.11 ax soon, ratification won’t be until at least 2018 or later. But once launched you can expect faster simultaneous connections from a single router, which in return will provide a better experience for users of a crowded network.
Original Article at – http://gigaom.com/2014/06/12/next-phase-of-wifi-80211ax