RF Basic Background: 802.11ac Wave1 and Wave2
Description
RF Basic Background: 802.11ac Wave1 and Wave2
Resolution
802.11ac is the fifth generation protocol of Wifi family. 802.11ac is subdivided into two waves, Wave 1 (available now) and Wave 2 (available by the end of 2015). The first wave of 802.11ac can deliver up to 433 Mbps (low end), 867 Mbps (mid-tier), or 1300 Mbps (high end) at the physical layer. The second wave of 802.11ac can provide up to 3.47 Gbps.
Note: SonicPoint appliances ACi/ACe are Wave 1 products. SonicWave products are Wave 2.
802.11ac Wave 1 and Wave 2
| Parameter | 802.11ac Wave 1 | 802.11ac Wave2 |
| Spectrum | 5 GHz | |
| Bandwidth | Mandatory: 20, 40, and 80 MHz | Mandatory: 20, 40, and 80 MHz Optional: 160 adn 80+80 MHz |
| Modulation | Mandatory: BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM Optional: 256QAM | |
| Spatial Streams | Optional: Up to 3 | Optional:Up to 4 |
| Short guard interval | Optional | |
| Beamforming (Sounding) | Optional | |
| Aggregation | Madatory: TX and RX of A-MPDU Optional: RX A-MPDU of A-MSDU | |
| MU-MIMO | - | Optional |
Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) to enable transmission of more streams to several users simultaneously. New feature allows an AP to transmit different streams to several targeted clients simultaneously.
Beamforming (Sounding): this feature enables the beamformer to precisely steer its transmitted energy and path toward the receiver.
Note: Wave 1 solves most problems today, it is capable to achieve the speeds of TCP to most single 3 stream and signle stream (smartphone) clients. For Wave 1 of 802.11ac, you don't have to upgrade your current network. While, with future Wave 2 speeds (more than 2 Gbps), the uplink will require upgrading to use multiple GigE ports or even 10GigE ports.
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