KT Develops Korea's First WiFi 6E Standard Router
Supports all unlicensed frequency bands 2.4/5/6GHz
Traffic processing 10.74Gbps, terminal capacity 1,500 units KT announced on the 6th that it has developed a 'next-generation WiFi wireless router (WiFi Access Point)' that follows the 'Wi-Fi 6E' standard and provides a speed of 2.88 Gbps to laptops and smartphones.
▲ Next-generation WiFi wireless router with WiFi 6E technology
KT researchers testing [Photo = KT]
Wi-Fi 6E is a standard technology that has been expanded from 'Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)', and uses the 6GHz band to transmit and receive data to overcome communication interference problems caused by radio frequency saturation. The maximum speed that Wi-Fi 6E can service is 2.4Gbps, which is about twice as fast as Wi-Fi 6.
▲ Comparison of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E [Table = KT]
The 6GHz frequency is an unlicensed communication frequency supplied by the Ministry of Science and ICT in October of last year. It has 7 channels with 160MHz bandwidth (total bandwidth of 1200MHz), which is wider than the 2.4GHz or 5GHz unlicensed bands used by existing Wi-Fi wireless routers.
The next-generation Wi-Fi wireless router supports communications using all three unlicensed frequency bands: 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz. It can handle traffic of 10.74 gigabits per second (10.7Gbps), which is about 80% faster than Wi-Fi 6 wireless routers. The connection capacity is also 1.5 times larger than before, allowing 1,500 devices to be connected to one router at the same time.
In addition, '4096 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM),' one of the core technologies to be applied to 'Wi-Fi 7,' has been applied on a trial basis. With this technology, a 2.88 Gbps Wi-Fi service, which is faster than the speed (2.4 Gbps) provided by general Wi-Fi 6E wireless routers, is theoretically possible.
4096 QAM is a frequency modulation method that transmits 12 bits of data in one signal, and its data transmission efficiency is 20% higher than that of Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6 transmits data using '1024 QAM', sending 10 bits of data in one signal.
KT stated, “After verifying the next-generation Wi-Fi wireless router and Wi-Fi 6E technology in various environments, we have begun preparations to launch it as a commercial service,” and “We plan to review the scale and timing of building the next-generation Wi-Fi infrastructure according to the release schedule of new smartphones and laptops that support the 6GHz unlicensed band frequency.”
In addition, we plan to focus on developing 30Gbps Wi-Fi wireless router technology, which is the target of Wi-Fi 7.
