Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac Wave 2 Products Support MU-MIMO, 160 MHz Channels, and More

802.11ac WiFi is now found in many routers and devices, and the Wi-Fi alliance has so far certified close to 3,000 “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac” products. I understand that certification is not mandatory, but if you want to make sure a device works well, the certification at least means the devices have been tested for interoperability, security and application specific protocols, and found to work in a satisfactory manner.

Now the Wi-Fi alliance has announced Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac Wave 2 certification program with the following new requirements:

MU-MIMO (Multi-user Multiple Input Multiple Output) in order to send data to multiple devices at once to improve overall network efficiency and throughput
160 MHz channels support (not only 80 MHz) potentially doubling transmission speeds
Four spatial streams instead of just three spatial streams.
Extended 5 GHz channel support by adding more channels in the 5 GHz to reduce interference and congestion.

Currently the following WiFi SoCs, routers, and reference designs are said to be certified with Wave 2 features:

Broadcom BCM94709R4366AC
Marvell Avastar 88W8964
MediaTek MT7615 AP Reference Design and MT6632 STA Reference Design
Qualcomm IPQ8065 802.11ac 4-stream Dual-band, Dual-concurrent Router
Quantenna QSR1000 4×4 802.11ac Wave 2 Chipset Family

According to Wi-Fi alliance website, You can check “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac (with wave 2 features)” products by following this link, and at the time of writing there are 9 products listed. However, if you show “advanced filters” in that link, only “DL MU-MIMO” is selected, and if you start selecting “160 MHz channels” and “Extended 5 GHz Channel Support”, the number drops to two items: Broadcom BCM94709R4366AC and Mediatek MT6632. So either there’s a temporary issue with the website, or the certification does not guarantee all features are included, only MU-MIMO.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.