Snapdragon 855: 802.11ax-Ready / Wi-Fi 6 Demonstrations

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While the headline features of the new Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform might be its 5G connectivity, or the Cat 24 LTE modem, or the new CPU/GPU combination, further down the list is the fact that the S855 chip is also 802.11ax-ready. Under the new branding, this is ‘Wi-Fi 6’. Qualcomm had a demo to show it in action at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit.

[b]All In For Wi-Fi 6, the new name for 802.11ax
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Without requiring an extra chip, the new Snapdragon 855 SoC will enable the next generation flagships to be 802.11ax ready. This is the update to the popular 802.11ac standard, enabling higher throughput with similar hardware. A big point where 802.11ax wins is in congested networks: when multiple devices require substantial bandwidth, such as 4K/8K video, the new SoC supports 8 spatial streams concurrently, allowing it to perform better in these congested network situations.

The demo Qualcomm had at hand was straightforward – an 802.11ax access point with eight antennas going to three 802.11ax  devices and three 802.11ac devices, each doing a form of streaming video with variable bit rates matching the available access point-to-device bandwidth. In this congested network, the 802.11ax devices had higher bit rates and therefore higher quality and fewer dropped frames.

Full reading: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13701/sna...nstrations