Appendix Wi-Fi standards roadmap

The bandwidth allocation of 600 MHz of unrestricted spectrum in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands has neither changed nor expanded, since 1997. Advances in technology and user demands have increased exponentially creating a huge increase in the volume of network traffic. In 2022, Wi-Fi technology was stretched to carry close to 57% of all IP traffic. As 5G and IoT are making their way online, the 600 MHz bandwidth is fast becoming strained, exacerbating the following problems:

Congestion

Wi-Fi devices share the same digital spectrum, with each waiting its turn to transmit and receive data. As the number of connected Wi-Fi devices grows by almost 35% each year, congestion can degrade performance in even the best Wi-Fi networks. Traffic overloading is especially problematic in high-density venues like auditoriums, lecture halls, corporate hubs, stadia, etc. It is also a major issue in multi-dwelling units, where uncoordinated access points interfere with each other further worsening user experience.

Legacy bottlenecks

Backward compatibility, which is a key to Wi-Fi’s success, could also become a disadvantage. To ensure interoperability, slower, IEEE 802.11b/g/n devices must be prioritised equally with faster Wi-Fi 6 and 6E devices. However, when slotted ahead of a faster device, a slower device impedes overall throughput.

Constrained channel width

Wider channels translate into faster speeds; the 80 MHz and 160 MHz channels supported under current Wi-Fi standards offer high throughputs. The reality is many of these channels are non-contiguous, limiting the wide-channel advantage and constraining throughput.

Considered the biggest upgrade in two decades and beyond, the additional spectrum allocated to Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E which will expand further with Wi-Fi 7 will address most of the challenges stated above.

About Wi-Fi 6

Wi-Fi operates in the unlicensed spectrum, enabling a private enterprise or users to create a network without relying on a commercial service provider. Wi-Fi technology provides unmetered high-speed connectivity which enables user data collection by entities other than an MNOs. Wi-Fi systems are allocated to specific unlicensed spectrum band. Three frequency bands are currently available: 2.4 GHz (Wi-Fi 1, 3, 4 and 6), 5 GHz (Wi-Fi 2, 4, 5 and 6) and 6 GHz (Wi-Fi 6E). Due to varying regulations, the lower the frequency, the longer the reach and the lower the maximum speed (the transmit power for each channel plays a role). The 2.4 GHz band is used when a wider Wi-Fi coverage is required, and 5 GHz or 6 GHz band is used for faster speeds. Think of Wi-Fi channels as lanes in a highway, although they have different widths:

• pre-defined frequency ranges within a band (2.4, 5 and 6 GHz)
• standardises: 20, 40, 80 and 160 MHz

Wi-Fi 6 supports high-speed, low-latency connectivity and has a maximum speed of 9.6Gbps (almost 2.6 times more than Wi-Fi 5). As Wi-Fi 6 becomes the new standard for networks, businesses will migrate towards this standard especially in high-density environments, such as stadiums, convention centres and transport hubs. The Wi-Fi 6 technology maintains backward compatibility for older devices while increasing capacity and security, ramping up data rates, reducing network congestion and improving battery life for compatible devices.

Three key technological improvements of Wi-Fi 6’s performance over Wi-Fi 5:

• multiuser, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO): Allows a Wi-Fi AP to communicate with multiple devices simultaneously. This improves the overall Wi-Fi experience. MU-MIMO can significantly improve throughput in high-density networks; even for those using bandwidth-intensive services
• orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA): Divides a Wi-Fi channel into smaller frequency allocations (resource units). This allows an AP to communicate with multiple clients by assigning them to specific resource units.
• 1024-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM): Enables a 25 percent data rate increase in Wi-Fi 6 APs and devices. By varying the phase and amplitude of radio waves, the technology improves spectral efficiency by incorporating more data into each transmission

While Wi-Fi 6 is expected to improve speed significantly, towards 9.6 gigabits per second ,for mobile devices, the power and antennas needed to achieve the maximum rate are prohibitive due to battery and physical space restrictions. Additionally, most current mobile devices don’t require, and can’t  use the amount of data that comes from a multigigabit connection speed.

The main features include:

Operates in the existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Standard. This will be extended to incorporate additional bands between 1 and 7 GHz as they become available

This standard uses OFDMA technology, which allows multiple users with varying bandwidth needs to be served simultaneously . 802.11ax supports up to 8x8 MU-MIMO in both downlink and uplink, which allows it to serve up to 8 users simultaneously for a significant capacity boost. MU-MIMO also supports the performance of legacy devices (such as 802.11ac Wave 2 and older devices) to improve every device’s experience.

Uses spatial reuse In the traditional unmanaged approach, users compete to send data in uplink but 802.11ax works in a managed approach by scheduling users to avoid clashing with each other. This improves traffic flow and channel access by avoiding interference when sharing the airwaves and supports routers to intelligently decide when to transmit.

802.11ax allows devices to negotiate wake up times to send or receive data. TWT increases device sleep time and substantially improves battery life.

Data rates and channel widths similar to 802.11ac, with the exception of new Modulation and Coding Sets (MCS 10 and 11) with 1024-QAM.

Larger OFDM FFT sizes (4x larger), narrower subcarrier spacing (4X closer), and longer symbol time (4X) for improved robustness and performance in multipath fading environments and outdoors.

Uses Beamforming - It uses an explicit beamforming procedure, similar to that of 802.11ac.

Increased network capacity

With Wi-Fi 5 and earlier Wi-Fi technologies, capacity constraints were dictated by the overall efficiency of the resources the devices connected to. In this advanced digital content era, the on demand for wireless connectivity and mobility makes it critical to have a technology which provides capacity and efficiency the Wi-Fi 6 provides.

Wireless networks are no longer focused on mobile devices. It is estimated that, by 2025, there will be about 50 billion connected IoT devices globally.  At the  time of writing, more than 30 percent of all network-connected endpoints are IoT devices. These devices will create nearly 80 zettabytes of data by year 2025.

An introduction to Internet of Things in health

Increased network speed

Instead of increasing speed for individual devices, Wi-Fi 6 improves the network when multiple devices are connected. Client devices will have more opportunities to transmit and receive data, hence reducing latency and jitter.

Security improvements

Mandatory WPA3: Wi-Fi’s biggest security update, Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3), the protocols and technologies that provide authentication and encryption for Wi-Fi networks. WPA3 makes it extremely difficult for hackers to crack passwords. WPA3 is supported by current devices, but it’s optional. For Wi-Fi 6 devices to receive Wi-Fi Alliance certification, WPA3 is a requirement.

Simultaneous authentication of equals: WPA3 Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE) is an updated version of WPA2-Personal (aka PSK). SAE provides a more secure, password-based authentication and key agreement mechanism. SAE defines how a new device, or user, connects to a network access point when they exchange cryptographic keys. This delays the effect of a possible attack and makes the password difficult to crack. The SAE also averts the possible decryption of data when offline.

Protected management frames: WPA3 requires protected management frames (PMFs) to be enabled. PMFs enhance Wi-Fi security and network protection from malicious attacks, such as spoofing. It provides data confidentiality and replay protection of management frames.

About Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E, is an extended version of Wi-Fi 6 which operates in the 6 GHz frequency band. Operating in this frequency band, enables Wi-Fi 6E to provide higher performance, lower latency, and faster data rates than Wi-Fi 6 and traditional Wi-Fi technology. Wi-Fi 6E uses the 1200 MHz of newly added spectrum from 5.925 to 7.125 GHz. In reality, the additional band quadruples the airwaves for IoT devices, wireless APs and routers, optimising performance, improving throughput and faster data rates, cutting latency in half.

Wi-Fi 6E has essentially fixed the issues with “spectrum shortage” faced by the older Wi-Fi standards (i.e. the increasing demand for Wi-Fi  was predicted to exceed the actual capacity of the  available unlicensed spectrum). Wi-Fi 6E enables more simultaneous connections, to use the available bands in a more efficient manner, and to reduce power consumption. The 6 GHz spectrum is right above the existing 5 GHz spectrum (Wi-Fi 6) and allows for denser networks as the number of Wi-Fi channels that can be used is increased.

Wi-Fi 6E opens new airwaves for Wi-Fi signals over the 6 GHz band. This allows faster and more reliable connections with compatible devices. The additional band essentially quadruples the number of airwaves for APs, routers, and smart devices: 14 additional 80 MHz channels and seven additional 160 MHz channels. High performance, low latency, improved throughput and faster data rates will extend into the 6 GHz band.

Wi-Fi 6E is designed to alleviate the congestion, bottlenecks, and constrained channel width of legacy Wi-Fi bands:

Less congestion: Wi-Fi 6E offers a greater number of  20 MHz channels than Wi-Fi 6. The added channels can help to minimise congestion challenges and enable support for connected devices and more device types.

Higher speed: 1,200 MHz of contiguous spectrum enables channel bonding of 80 MHz (14 new channels), and 160 MHz (7 new channels). This is good for high-density locations such as convention centres and auditoriums. In small network locations Wi-Fi 6E delivers speeds to complement the multi-gigabit speeds of the latest fibre and DOCSIS 3.1 networks. Combining multiple 20 MHz channels into one wider, higher-throughput 80 MHz or 160 MHz channel, existing Wi-Fi 6 clients can reach their maximum speeds without the limits of operating in smaller channel widths. Wi-Fi 6E also supports more wired replacement applications like wireless point-to-point and indoor mesh backbone links.

Low latency: Wi-Fi 6E supports only devices capable of OFDMA; multiuser, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO); 1024-QAM; and 6 GHz. All other legacy Wi-Fi devices will be limited to the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. New APs are expected to provide backward compatibility to support Wi-Fi 6E and legacy bands.

Applications of Wi-Fi 6E

• 4K and 8K streaming.
• low latency Wi-Fi calling.
• mobile AR / VR gaming.
• delivering efficient gigabit Wi-Fi in smart homes.
• high-speed tethering.
• real-time gaming.
• indoor public venues.
• industrial IoT.
• data offload from 5G network

About Wi-Fi 7

Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE Standard 802.11be) utilises the 2.4 GHz (2.400 to 2.495 GHz), 5 GHz (5.170 to 5.835 GHz) and 6 GHz (5.925 to 7.125 GHz) frequency bands and can support a  theoretical maximum throughput of up to 46 Gbps.  The single channel bandwidth will be increased from 160 MHz (Wi-Fi 6/6E) to 320 MHz with 3 channels in the 6 GHz band (5.925 to 7.125 GHz). Coupled with features like 4096 QAM, 16 spatial streams, Multi-Access Point and Multi-Link Operation, Wi-Fi 7 will deliver better data rates and improved latency.

Comparison of Wi-Fi generations capabilities

The new generation of Wi-Fi standards will provide a wealth of improvements for all new levels of responsiveness and consistency. The features of Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 will not only increase speeds but will also improve reliability and responsiveness for usages in future which demand extreme precision and consistency.

Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 enable significantly faster speeds by allowing more data to be packed into each transmission. Increased Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) to between 1K - 4K enables each signal to embed greater amounts of data more densely to highly optimise data transmission. For instance, the benefit for typical Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 laptops is a potential maximum data rates between 2.4 Gbps to 5.8 Gbps which could enable high quality 8K video streaming or reduce a 15 GB file download to between 25 seconds and a minute. The Multi-Link Operation (MLO) feature of future Wi-Fi standards will enable devices to simultaneously connect on two or more bands to enable faster speeds through aggregation. This feature also allows both bands to be used concurrently to share redundant/unique data to improve reliability with ultra-low latencies.

Features include :

• 320 MHz bandwidth and more efficient utilisation of non-contiguous spectrum
• multi-band/multi-channel aggregation and operation
• 16 spatial streams and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) protocols enhancements
• 4096-QAM (4K-QAM)
• multi-Access Point (AP) Coordination
• enhanced link adaptation and retransmission protocol (for example Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ))
• enhanced resource allocation in OFDMA
• integrating time-sensitive networking extensions for low-latency real-time traffic (IEEE 802.11aa)

Techniques to Improve Wi-Fi roaming performance

The following IEEE standards support roaming and are recommended to be enabled in the wireless core infrastructure, the exception is if the client device supports these standards.

IEEE Standard 802.11k (Radio Resource Management)

The 802.11k standard help devices search quickly for nearby APs that are available as roaming targets by creating an optimised list of channels. When the signal strength of the current AP weakens, your device will scan for target APs from this list. The 802.11k standard reduces roaming time by allowing the client to rapidly determine which AP it should roam to next so when the client is ready to roam, it has a better idea of where to roam.

IEEE Standard 802.11r (Fast Basic Service Set (BSS) Transition (FT))

With 802.11r enabled, the client can pre-authenticate to a target AP before roaming and reduce the authentication time and minimise interruption. The IEEE Standard 802.11r  protocol implements the storage of encryption keys of all access points. It enables faster roaming by allowing encryption keys to be stored on network APs so the client does not need to perform the complete authentication process every time it roams to a new AP within the network.

IEEE Standard 802.11v (Wireless Network Management)

The 802.11v protocol enables client devices and APs to exchange information about the network topology, including information about the RF environment, making each client “network aware”, and able to use this information to improve Wi-Fi performance. These features include assessing the connection quality of the band that the end device is using (for dual-band APs & devices) and informing the device that a better alternative is available (for example 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz).

802.11v also supports network assisted roaming where the client device can use the information it has about the network to associate with a different AP based on, for example, traffic load, connection quality etc. The protocol also offers power saving features which can be configured, if appropriate to the application or use case, to help reduce energy consumption.

Road map for deploying Wi-Fi solutions

Wi-Fi 6 emerged in 2020. It however, gained popularity in 2022 and it is gradually replacing a lot of the Wi-Fi 5 infrastructure installations. The industry is expected to fully embrace Wi-Fi 6E by 2026 and Wi-Fi 7 subsequent years.

There are several security concerns related to Wi-Fi roaming technology.. Here are a few possibilities:

Rogue access points

Rogue access points are unauthorised access points that are set up to mimic legitimate Wi-Fi networks, often with the intention of stealing sensitive information from unsuspecting users. As Wi-Fi networks become more complex and dynamic with roaming capabilities, it may become more difficult for organisations to detect rogue access points.

Encryption and authentication

Wi-Fi networks rely on encryption and authentication protocols to secure data transmitted over the network. As the number of access points and the complexity of the roaming process increases, it may become more difficult to ensure that encryption and authentication protocols are properly configured and maintained.

Cyberattacks

As Wi-Fi networks become more pervasive and users rely on them more heavily, they become attractive targets for cyberattacks. Wi-Fi networks could be vulnerable to a range of attacks, including man-in-the-middle attacks, denial-of-service attacks, and malware attacks.

Internet of Things (IoT) devices

IoT devices often have weak security features and are easy targets for cybercriminals. As the number of IoT devices connected to Wi-Fi networks increases, the risk of a security breach grows.

Network security considerations

Human error

Human error is always a concern when it comes to security. As Wi-Fi networks become more complex and dynamic, it may become more difficult for users to properly configure and maintain their devices, which could leave them vulnerable to security breaches.

Here are the best security practices for the next generation of Wi-Fi roaming:

• use strong authentication: Strong authentication measures, such as two-factor authentication or biometric authentication, should be used to ensure the security of the network. This can help prevent unauthorised access to the network and protect user credentials
• use strong encryption: Strong encryption, such as WPA3, should be used to protect network traffic from interception and eavesdropping. This can help prevent data breaches and protect user privacy
• monitor for rogue access points: Rogue access points can be used to set up a fake network to trick users into connecting to a malicious network. It is important to monitor the network for any unauthorised access points and to prevent unauthorised devices from connecting to the network
• implement network segmentation: Network segmentation can be used to separate different types of devices and users on the network. This can help prevent unauthorised access and limit the spread of malware or other attacks
• use network access control: Network access control (NAC) can be used to ensure that only authorised devices and users are allowed on the network. NAC can enforce security policies and detect any devices that are not in compliance with the policies
• regularly review and update network configuration: Regularly reviewing and updating the network configuration can help prevent misconfigurations and other vulnerabilities. It is important to ensure that the network configuration is up to date and secure
• Implement intrusion detection and prevention: Intrusion detection and prevention (IDP) can be used to detect and prevent attacks on the network. IDP can detect and block malicious traffic and provide alerts when an attack is detected
• conduct regular security training and awareness: Regular security training and awareness can help users understand the importance of security and help prevent social engineering attacks. This can help prevent user mistakes and increase the overall security of the network

Future Wi-Fi security issues

Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 are the latest generations of Wi-Fi technology that offer higher speeds, better connectivity, and more efficient use of the radio spectrum. While these technologies bring many benefits, there are also security concerns that should be considered.

Here are some of the security concerns of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7:

• brute force attacks: Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 support higher data rates and use wider channels, which could make them more vulnerable to brute force attacks. Attackers could use powerful computing resources to try to guess the encryption keys used by the network
• rogue access points: As with earlier Wi-Fi technologies, rogue access points remain a potential security concern with Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7. Attackers could set up their own access points to try to trick users into connecting to a malicious network and steal sensitive information
• denial-of-service attacks: Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 could be more vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, which could disrupt or disable the network. Attackers could use flooding attacks to overwhelm the network with a high volume of traffic, preventing legitimate users from accessing the network
• man-in-the-middle attacks: With Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7, there is a risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, where attackers intercept the communication between the client and the access point to eavesdrop or alter the communication
• security configuration: Finally, the security configuration of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 networks can also be a concern. For example, if network administrators don't properly configure encryption and authentication mechanisms, the network could be vulnerable to attacks