Wi Fi Technology & the Evolution of Wi Fi Generations

What is Wi Fi? Simply Wi Fi stands for “Wireless Fidelity” and it is a collection of networking protocols used for data transmission through radio waves. The “Wi Fi certified” symbol we see in products is authorized and given by Wi Fi Alliance which tests the Wi Fi products for compatibility with the IEEE standards. Even though some devices may not have this certification, they could also be used Wi Fi connections. Mainly Wi Fi obeys the standards of IEEE 802.11 protocol and different Wi Fi generations follow these protocol standards.

In the present world most commonly used radio wave frequencies for Wi Fi are 2.4GHz(UHF) and 5GHz(SHF). If a device uses the 2.4GHz band Wi FI connection, the range of data transmission is higher relatively to 5GHz band. The radio waves can penetrate several walls when transmitting data and due to this most of the devices use this Wi Fi band. In general it is considered 2.4GHz band has at least 11 channels but this could vary based on the country. The main issue arises in this type is due to overcrowding limited amount of bandwidth could be transmitted reducing the data transmission speed. Therefore obviously the higher frequency 5GHz is used for high speed data transmission within a Wi Fi medium. Unlike the previous band the 5GHz band is considered to have at least 23 different channels and also this could differ based on the regulatory domains(countries). This band transmits data over a lower range compared to 2.4GHz but with a higher speed. Due to this reason latest Wi Fi devices have a dual mode which supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz modes.
If you have a Wi Fi router which transmits data at 100mbps internet speed but you only get either half of it or a lesser amount through your mobile phone, the reason could be that your mobile phone may not support the 5GHz higher bandwidth. Usually all the newest devices support the 5GHz range and therefore most of the time only older devices will have this problem. But there could be exceptional cases due to the incompatibility of the Wi Fi channels and etc…

Now that we have discussed what Wi Fi actually provides and how it functions on the technical side, let’s discuss how the Wi Fi technology developed over the years to the fastest, high consistent and undulating connections in the present day.

As mentioned above, Wi Fi standards are provided and regulated by the IEEE standards which also categorize the Wi Fi generations according to those standards. The following table will help you to understand the technical features for each of the generation.

As the data transfer rates mentioned above are theoretically calculated, practical data link rates are somewhat lower than the theoretical speeds due to various interferences caused in the real world. From the above table the first four generations were generally known as Wi Fi 1, Wi Fi 2, Wi Fi 3 & Wi Fi 3E respectively. The older Wi Fi generations supported somewhere over 50Mbps data transfer speed. With the introduction of Wi Fi 4, the speeds were increased more than 10 times the earlier generation. This was a major breakthrough in the digital world as this allowed people to achieve data transfer rates more than they received from wired connections. By now almost all the Wi Fi enabled devices support Wi Fi 4 which could easily reach speeds above 100Mbps during data transfers. The important feature about Wi Fi 5 generation is it will only support data transmission at 5GHz frequency. This means devices which do not support dual band mode Wi Fi won’t be able to receive or send data through Wi Fi.

The latest generation is Wi Fi 6E which allows extremely high data transferring speeds around 9.6Gbps.Wi Fi 6E is also known as High Efficiency Wi Fi and it is developed to provide Wi Fi signals to recipients under more dense environments. Most of the devices still do not support this Wi Fi certification level. Only flagship mobile phones and some other high performance devices manufactured will support these higher speeds for Wi Fi connections. The next iconic change in Wi Fi 6E is that this generation introduced 6GHz frequency for allowing a wider range for reaching high bandwidths. Since this generation is still new to the world, Wi Fi 6E is widely used for special cases like cloud computing, AR & VR applications.
It is a common notion the next generation of Wi Fi(possibly called Wi Fi 7) will allow users to transfer data at speeds well above 10Gbps wirelessly.

Hope this article will offer you a basic understanding about the Wi Fi technology and how the Wi Fi features evolved over the years in the modern world. I’d be grateful for any comment and your thoughts on my first article!