Wave 2 of the 802 11ac standard builds upon wave 1 with the following key additional functionalities.
802 11 ac wave 2 vs wave 1.
Wave 1 phy rate maxes out at 1 3 gbps while wave 2 can be 2 34 gbps.
Wave 1 brought features such as.
Wave 1 wireless otherwise known as the first version of 802 11ac was created largely with laptops in mind.
It uses su mimo which means that multiple streams of data can only be sent or received between one device at a time.
3 spatial or data streams not mu mimo what are wave 2 s capabilities.
The 802 11ac wlan standard allows for higher theoretical speeds in the 5 ghz band.
This wlan standard is successor to ieee 802 11n.
802 11ac wave 2 provides a significant boost in performance when compared to 802 11ac wave 1 and 802 11n.
Theoretically using 160 mhz bandwidth means more users can be supported with better performance.
Channels for wave 2 products would mostly move from 80 mhz at the high end for wave 1 to 160 mhz 80 80 bonded channels.
Wave 2 is a superset of 802 11ac wave 1.
Even if the throughput was 50 lower than the theoretical phy rate for wave 2 in theory it would still be above 1 gbps.
Related 802 11 ac vs 802 11 n.
802 11ac is coming to market in two releases.
What are wave 1 s capabilities.
Addition of 80 mhz channels.
This page compares wlan 802 11ac vs 802 11ax and mentions difference between 802 11ac and 802 11ax.
Netgear began shipping the following 802 11ac wave 1 access points in 2015.
Coming from 802 11n wave 1 had a huge impact on wireless networking.
It supports high throughput due to addition of higher bandwidths multi user mimo higher number of spatial streams and higher number of modulation schemes such as 256 qam.
Moving up to 160 mhz is good for bandwidth since it is similar to adding more lanes on a highway.
The wi fi alliance separated the introduction of ac wireless products into two phases wave named wave 1 and wave 2.
As such it supports all the data rates of 802 11ac wave 1.
8 9 from mid 2013 the alliance started certifying wave 1 802 11ac products shipped by manufacturers based on the ieee 802 11ac draft 3 0 the ieee standard was not finalized until later that year.
While 802 11ac gen 2 or wave 2 is a step up from wave 1 the differences aren t that drastic.
Wave 1 and wave 2.