IEEE announced approval the 802.11ac-2013 specification amendment, which enables wireless LAN data rates up to 7 Gbps in the 5 GHz band, more than 10 times the speed that was previously standardized.
The IEEE 802.11ac-2013 gains are achieved by multiple concurrent downlink transmissions, referred to as “multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output” (MU MIMO). Smart antenna technology and up to four simultaneous user transmissions enables more efficient spectrum use, higher system capacity and reduced latency. Client devices with a limited number of antennas, such as smartphones and tablets, will benefit from MU MIMO.
IEEE noted that the 802.11ac specification adds channel bandwidths of 80 MHz and 160 MHz with both contiguous and non-contiguous 160 MHz channels for flexible channel assignment. It adds higher order modulation in the form of 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), providing an additional 33-percent improvement in data rate. A further doubling of the data rate is achieved by increasing the maximum number of spatial streams to eight.
“As wireless networks become more widely deployed, users are able to transition applications from fixed links to the convenience, freedom and versatility of wireless links,” said Bruce Kraemer, chair of the IEEE 802.11™ working group. “These transitions create an evolutionary demand to enhance the capacity of wireless networks in order to support the increasing number of users, as well as new classes of applications with higher bandwidth requirements. Moreover, as WLAN usage of shared spectrum grows, the wireless access mechanisms need to be improved to achieve higher multi-user throughput. IEEE 802.11ac is intended to meet these evolving needs for higher data rates and to help enable new generations of data-intensive wireless applications.”
