Why WiFi 6-capable antenna will be the cornerstone of ambitious mass IoT projects

How reliable outdoor hardware will unlock advanced WiFi 6 applications

Andy Bird, Managing Director at GTT Wireless

Recent breakthroughs in WiFi technology have led to the development and roll-out of WiFi 6, also known as 802.11ax. This is an entirely new standard that delivers significant improvements on previous versions such as faster data transfer rates and lower latency. With the sustained growth of internet traffic, consumer devices in households and mass IoT deployments, WiFi 6 represents an opportunity to ease this rising congestion, support a larger number of devices per network and accelerate wireless speeds.

Beyond solving these existing pain points, WiFi 6 has begun to unlock new and advanced applications for organisations in industries spanning manufacturing, transportation and beyond. Companies will need to select and roll out high quality hardware, such as WiFi 6-capable antennas that can survive and thrive in outdoor deployments, in order to deploy and maintain equally high quality 24×7 operations.

WiFi 6 connectivity: better, faster, broader

WiFi 6 brings several major breakthroughs to the table to improve on older WiFi standards – focused on enhancing performance to achieve faster speeds. Unlike WiFi 5, the new technology operates on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands, and this is expected to extend to cover the entire 1–6 GHz spectrum once national regulators approve its use.

This wider scope of operation offers higher throughput speeds, higher data transfer rates, and lower latency. Advanced features such as ‘target wake time’ will bring further benefits such as longer battery life for wireless devices using the new standard.

Crucially for businesses, WiFi 6 supports more devices operating on the same channel at the same time, meaning it excels at delivering reliable high performance in dense deployments such as IoT and machine-to-machine environments.

Enterprise WiFi applications are growing

The arrival of WiFi 6 gives businesses the chance to both improve the capabilities of existing applications and embrace more advanced use cases.

Take a manufacturing facility with lots of high-value equipment spread across a large factory floor. For the first time, manufacturers of all sizes will be able to adopt mass IoT sensors that regularly poll the status of equipment for regular condition monitoring and advanced applications such as predictive maintenance – without investing in separate disparate networks. Engineers will be able to monitor equipment in real-time using high resolution video thanks to the increase in available bandwidth.

Attempting similar deployments using WiFi 5 would have placed serious strain on a typical network, causing performance slowdowns for all users and devices.

The use cases are limitless for similar applications in other industries – think sensors embedded in roads to monitor conditions and traffic in real time, or 4k quality video monitoring to ensure 24×7 security at sensitive locations.

Fit-for-purpose antenna hold the key to successful WiFi 6 adoption

Although the new standard offers greater opportunities to adopt these promising applications and more, underlying infrastructure will also need to improve to support mass device onboarding for these advanced IoT and Industry 4.0 projects. Businesses looking to adopt WiFi 6 connectivity will need hardware capable of supporting the standard and operating across the entire spectrum.

Engineers should take stock of which antenna ranges already on the market will best suit their WiFi 6 requirements. New antenna will need to be integrated into existing electronics solutions and their protective enclosures, so standardised N-type connectors are essential. And as any connectivity solution is only as strong as its weakest link, components must be able to operate in temperatures spanning -40 and +70 degrees Celsius, resist high humidity and wet environments, and be fully UV-resistant if exposed to sunlight.

GTT Wireless, a leading provider of high-quality antenna, now offers a WiFi 6-capable antenna range suitable for indoor and outdoor deployments and effortless integration into existing electronics enclosures. This low-profile antenna range includes both vertical and horizontal polarisation antenna for high isolation diversity, and offer reliable performance across the entire frequency range, balancing high efficiency with strong average and peak gain – a perfect framework for organisations looking to roll out advanced connectivity.

A competitive advantage in today’s data-driven world

The introduction of WiFi 6 offers great value to enterprises that want to capture, transfer and analyse data simultaneously from a large volume of connected devices, leading to major operational efficiencies. We are already seeing the first WiFi 6-capable consumer devices come to market, but in the enterprise space organisations will need to source and integrate fit-for-purpose components to benefit from this advanced technology.

This is where it is important to compare performance levels and technical specifications when evaluating hardware such as antenna, as I discussed in my recent blog on next-generation antenna selection.

Opting for components that are cost-effective, easy to integrate and proven to perform in any environment will help businesses avoid the headache of an expensive and lengthy project, with constantly shifting goals and technical requirements.

GTT Wireless now offers a range of dual band, IK09-rated antenna to support WiFi 6 up to 7GHz frequencies. To get started introducing the next generation of wireless connectivity into your business today, contact our expert team for more details.