IEEE 802.11ay

IEEE 802.11ay is a proposed enhancement to the current technical standards for Wi-Fi. It is the follow-up of 802.11ad adding four times the bandwidth and adding MIMO up to 4 streams. It will be the second WiGig standard. IEEE 802.11ay is a proposed enhancement to the current technical standards for Wi-Fi. It is the follow-up of 802.11ad adding four times the bandwidth and adding MIMO up to 4 streams. It will be the second WiGig standard. 802.11ay is a type of WLAN in the IEEE 802.11 set of WLANs. It will have a frequency of 60 GHz, a transmission rate of 20–40 Gbit/s and an extended transmission distance of 300–500 meters. It is likely to have mechanisms for channel bonding and MU-MIMO technologies. It was originally expected to be released in 2017, but has been delayed until 2019. 802.11ay will not be a new type of WLAN in the IEEE 802.11 set, but will simply be an improvement on 802.11ad. Where 802.11ad uses a maximum of 2.16 GHz bandwidth, 802.11ay bonds four of those channels together for a maximum bandwidth of 8.64 GHz. MIMO is also added with a maximum of 4 streams. The link-rate per stream is 44Gbit/s, with four streams this goes up to 176Gbit/s. Higher order modulation is also added, probably up to 256-QAM. Applications could include replacement for Ethernet and other cables within offices or homes, and provide backhaul connectivity outside for service providers. 802.11ay should not be confused with the similarly named 802.11ax that is also set to be released in 2019. Although they boast similar speeds, the 802.11ay standard is designed to run at much higher frequencies. The lower frequency of 802.11ax enables it to penetrate walls, something that the 11ay standard struggles to do. Draft version 0.1 of 802.11ay was released in January 2017, followed by draft version 0.2 in March 2017. Draft version 1.0 was made available in November 2017, and draft 1.2 was available as of April 2018.