Overview
IEEE 802.11ac, a high throughput wireless LAN technology, can provide gigabit speeds and improved the ability for many users accessing access points simultaneously. Practically speaking, initial speeds around the 400-600Mbps will most likely result, but with sufficient capacity for carrying multiple compressed video streams over a single channel. 2nd wave implementations will move to speeds closer to 1Gbps. The end game is a total potential interface rate of up to 6.93Gbps (8 spatial streams, 256 QAM, 160 MHz channels).
Why it Matters
11ac can provide higher levels of performance approaching wired gigabit Ethernet networking. Multiple users will eventually be abel to access Wi-Fi hot spots simultaneously (airports, hotels, stadium, or SMB/enterprise networks) each at near gigbit speed.
11ac will aid in offloading more data from cellular to Wi-Fi networks. Globally, 46 percent of total mobile data traffic was offloaded onto the fixed network through Wi-Fi or femtocell in 2014. In 2014, 2.2 exabytes of mobile data traffic were offloaded onto the fixed network each month. Without offload, mobile data traffic would have grown 84 percent rather than 69 percent in 2014.[i]
Carriers can better meet the ever-growing demands for broadband enhancements, which also enable new revenue streams from service opportunities like data analytics, location-based services and Wi-Fi roaming.
Technology
802.11ac is essentially an evolutionary extension of the current 802.11n Wi-Fi standard with 11n’s theoretical speed, depending upon configuration, of up to 600Mbps at peak (obtained with 4 transmit/4 receive antenna and 4 different spatial streams – MIMO 4x4). 11ac is designed to deliver speeds up to 1Gbps by doubling the MIMO spatial streams to 8 in 2nd wave of implementation.
Like 11n, 11ac uses multiple antennae for sending but will operate in the less crowded 5GHz spectrum. Channel width goes to 80MHz and then to 160MHz to provide more bandwidth (compared to 20MHz for 11n) and employs a higher density higher density modulation scheme (256 QAM vs 64 QAM for 11n);
The real innovation of 11ac, coming in the 2nd wave, is Multi-use MIMO (MU-MIMO) with up to 4 simultaneous connections each with the theoretical capacity of 1.3Gbps of bandwidth. MU-MIMO provides for multiple logical connections to devices at the same time thus increasing network efficiency by making use of its gigabit capacity. This is enabled by a process called transmit beamforming which concentrates RF energy in a specific direction, for a specific client. Initially,consumer devices with 11ac radios are likely to be single-stream clients (with just one antenna), with a maximum data rate of about 433Mbps. Faster data rates will require MU-MIMO clients.[ii]
How 802.11ac Accelerates 802.11n Souce: Cisco white paper cited in endnote ii
How 802.11ac Accelerates 802.11n Souce: Cisco white paper cited in endnote ii
Players, Enablers, Numbers
Ruckus Wireless, Cisco Systems, Huawei Technologies, Aruba and HP are among the largest vendors of carrier Wi-Fi equipment. In some instances engineering and manufacturing efficiencies enable access point deployments at a cost less than the predecessor technology 802.11n technology. Some newer 11n access points are field-upgradable to 11ac. New System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designs may further reduce deployments costs.
ABI Research suggests that by the end of 2015, about 71 million consumer Wi-Fi devices based on the 802.11ac standards will ship worldwide.
Research firm Infonetics found that most of the carrier Wi-Fi revenue last year came from access points, with another 22 percent of sales coming from Wi-Fi controllers. In the second half of the year, 802.11ac APs accounted for 17 percent of Wi-Fi AP revenue, and will drive spending on hot spot upgrades through at least 2019.
Related: Hot Spot 2.0
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