How OFDMA helps define today’s most advanced Wi-Fi 6 experiences

One of the defining features of today’s Wi-Fi 6 is the support for OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access). As manufacturers and the industry at large embrace Wi-Fi 6, successful OFDMA implementation — along with the ability to quantify that value — has varied from one provider to the next, requiring analysis and documentation.

Recently, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. demonstrated the benefits of successfully delivered, highly differentiated OFDMA implementations in a new research-based whitepaper. As a vocal proponent of all multi-user technologies in Wi-Fi 6 (OFDMA and MU-MIMO), as well as the sophisticated scheduling techniques required to effectively wield them, we’re proud to present this breakthrough and supporting analyses in the whitepaper, The Benefits of OFDMA for Wi-Fi 6.

Our analyses were performed across a set of real-life, intense-usage network deployments spanning home, enterprise, and classroom scenarios. Across all scenarios, OFDMA delivered a reduction of latency in downlink connections by up to 90 percent, and uplink connections by up to 99 percent (depending on the scenario and compared to legacy single-user (SU) mode).

Additionally, we conducted analyses to see the combined system benefits across both throughput and latency under intense-usage scenarios for voice, gaming, and uplink video, which proved to be equally compelling. In these, we pitted our technology platforms against a leading chipset competitor and found that Qualcomm Technologies-based platforms delivered far superior performance. This highlights not only the implementation superiority, but the role our highly optimized scheduler plays in the real-time balancing between OFDMA use for the benefit of multiple users with relatively small payloads or single user (SU) mode for users with large payloads.

Overall, these analyses show that to deliver the best of what Wi-Fi 6 has to offer, investment in the comprehensive portfolio of multi-user features is critical. That’s why it’s important to not only provide OFDMA and SU/MU-MIMO technology, but also a scheduler that can dynamically assign any one of these technologies to a given use case, managing network traffic and delivering superior user experiences. These advanced next-gen multi-user technologies are offered across our Wi-Fi 6 mobile and networking product portfolios, enabling our customers to deliver leading-edge connectivity in the home, school, public, and enterprise environments. From gaming to voice and beyond, this presents great promise to transform industries, but also empower new and improved experiences for users.

For greater insight into our highly differentiated OFDMA implementations and the benefits of OFDMA, download the full report.

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