New wireless networks will support higher user capacity

Many enterprises have encountered wireless network capacity problems. As wireless devices and high-bandwidth applications surge, network speed and data capacity become increasingly difficult to guarantee. To meet the increasing demand, the WLAN administrator should make two preparations: improve the efficiency of the existing channel and transfer the bandwidth load by deploying a new frequency. These two strategies are expected to help enterprises close to the 802.11n peak out of the predicament.

Draft 802.11ac improves WLAN capacity

The quickest way for enterprises to significantly increase WLAN capacity is to migrate existing access terminals (APS) to 802.11ac. The draft 802.11ac standard (often referred to as Gigabit Wi-Fi) further improved the 802.11n and significantly increased the total capacity of the WLAN.

The Wi-Fi-certified ac products provide faster data transmission rate, more reliable package transmission, and a more clean 5 GHz channel and wider channel. It can support applications with higher throughput, such as HD videos. Specifically, enterprises can achieve the following improvements after migrating to 802.11ac:

Speed. The maximum speed of 802.11n data is 450 ~ 600 Mbps, which uses four wireless data streams to transmit traffic. The first batch of 802.11ac products also use the same wireless data stream, but it can achieve a maximum speed of 1 to 3 Gbps. By the end of, the next batch of 802.11ac products will achieve a peak speed of Gbps. However, the actual transmission speed depends on the client performance and distance. For example, a single data stream smartphone that supports Mbps in 802.11n is expected to achieve a transmission speed of Mbps in 802.11ac. As the data transmission speed increases, the transmission time is reduced to 1/3. Therefore, the 802.11ac allows administrators to increase the maximum number of users at a single access end.

Spectrum efficiency. 802.11n and 802.11ac use orthogonal amplitude modulation (QAM) to send data, but 802.11ac can send 4 times of data on each channel. However, 256-QAM only supports short-distance transmission, so it can only achieve 4 times of capacity in clients with a range of 20 feet.

Only 5 GHz is supported. 802.11n supports both the crowded GHz band and the loose 5 GHz band. In contrast, 802.11ac only supports clients in the 5 GHz band. Due to the low interference of 5 GHz and the improvement in the wireless frequency engineering, the implementation speed of 802.11ac devices is likely to exceed that of similar devices of 802.11n, which will increase the total capacity of WLAN.

Wider channels. 802.11n combines two 20 MHz channels into a 40 MHz channel, doubling the throughput. The first batch of 802.11ac products will create 80 MHz channels by merging channels again; the second batch of products will implement MHz channels next year. Channel widening does not increase the available spectrum-no matter how many channels are divided, the 5 GHz band only has a bandwidth of about 1 GHz. However, channels with double bandwidth can provide independent fast transmission channels for High-throughput applications to increase their transmission speed, without being blocked by slow and high-latency applications or being snatched from the bandwidth.

Therefore, if you replace the old 802.11a/g or 802.11n access end with an ac Access end that has passed the Wi-Fi authentication, the enterprise may immediately see an increase in WLAN capacity, especially when users use new smartphones, tablets, and laptops with 802.11ac interfaces. The legacy client cannot obtain all the advantages of the new standard, but its experience is still improved. Therefore, the administrator can still increase the total number of devices supported by each WLAN. By the end of 2014, when the second batch of 802.11ac products were available, the multi-user multi-input and multi-output technologies used by them would allow each access end to support up to four clients at the same time, this further improves the capacity of the wireless network.

802.11ad further increases WLAN capacity

Migrating existing WLAN to 802.11ac will benefit all Wi-Fi devices and applications. However, some specific devices and applications (mainly tablet computers and video applications) are still desperately squeezing limited shared bandwidth. Although some q service quality methods (such as Wi-Fi multimedia [WMM]) can be used to divide the traffic priority and avoid traffic starvation, all 802.11ac devices will eventually compete for the effective bandwidth of the 5 GHz channel.

Fortunately, enterprises will soon be able to use 802.11ad devices to meet Bandwidth growth needs, and they can move large bandwidth devices or applications to unused 60 GHz channels. The new 802.11ad standard (often referred to as Wiig) will use many of the same technologies as 802.11ac to achieve a data transmission speed of up to 7 Gbps. However, 802.11ad uses completely different channels, so it will increase the total available spectrum of WLAN by an order of magnitude.

That is to say, the 60 GHz bandwidth and penetration of 802.11ad are more limited. However, its features determine that 802.11ad is suitable for achieving ultra-high throughput communication between neighboring devices. Therefore, enterprise WLAN administrators can use 802.11ad to transfer the bandwidth requirements of devices and applications under such conditions, thus expanding the overall capacity. For example, high-definition video transmission for wall-mounted wireless displays and continuous communication between tablets and external monitors that replace desktop computers.

Capacity Planning

Wi-Fi-certified ad products are expected to be available in early 2014. By then, more and more devices will support the 802.11ac and 802.11ad standards to support long-distance high-throughput communication. Therefore, enterprise administrators should now consider using 802.11ad methods and locations in the Workspace-for example, transferring high-definition video traffic from 802.11ac access terminals with excessive loads.

In the end, the combination of 802.11ac and 802.11ad is like re-laying the highway and adding lanes-both policies allow more vehicles to access more quickly, thus increasing the total throughput. These two standards will help enterprise WLAN administrators design and deploy new upgraded networks, greatly improving data transmission speed and supporting greater user density.