IEEE 802.11ax, officially marketed by the Wi-Fi Alliance as Wi-Fi 6 (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) and Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz), is an IEEE standard for wireless local-area networks (WLANs) and the successor of 802.11ac. It is also known as High Efficiency Wi-Fi, for the overall improvements to Wi-Fi 6 clients in dense environments. It is designed to operate in license-exempt bands between 1 and 7.125 GHz, including the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands already in common use as well as the much wider 6 GHz band (e.g. 5.925–7.125 GHz in the US, a band 1.200 GHz wide). The main goal of this standard is enhancing throughput-per-area in high-density scenarios, such as corporate offices, shopping malls and dense residential apartments. While the nominal data rate improvement against 802.11ac is only 37%,: qt the overall throughput increase (over an entire network) is 300% (hence High Efficiency).: qt This also translates to 75% lower latency. The quadrupling of overall throughput is made possible by a higher spectral efficiency. The key feature underpinning 802.11ax is orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), which is equivalent to cellular technology applied into Wi-Fi.: qt Other improvements on spectrum utilization are better power-control methods to avoid interference with neighboring networks, higher order 1024‑QAM, up-link direction added with the down-link of MIMO and MU-MIMO to further increase throughput, as well as dependability improvements of power consumption and security protocols such as Target Wake Time and WPA3. The IEEE 802.11ax standard was finalised on September 1, 2020 when Draft 8 received 95% approval in the sponsor ballot and received final approval from the IEEE Standards Board on February 1, 2021.
