Considerations for 802.11ax Device Testing: High Efficiency Wireless Testing

Although the creation of new wireless standards promises many benefits to us as consumers, they also introduce new design and test challenges.  The new 802.11ax Wireless LAN standard, also known as High-Efficiency Wi-Fi (HEW), is an evolution of the 802.11ac standard, and is expected to become a mainstream Wi-Fi technology by 2019. Designed to deliver better data throughput in dense user environments, HEW uses several technologies that are new to Wi-Fi including narrower sub-carrier spacing, higher-order modulation schemes (1024-QAM), and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). In this presentation, we will provide an introduction to the new features of 802.11ax, compare the standard to 802.11ac, and explain the challenges for RF test.