| Generation | IEEE standard |
Adopted | Maximum link rate (Mb/s) |
Radio frequency (GHz) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Wi-Fi 0*) | 802.11 | 1997 | 1–2 | 2.4 |
| (Wi-Fi 1*) | 802.11b | 1999 | 1–11 | 2.4 |
| (Wi-Fi 2*) | 802.11a | 1999 | 6–54 | 5 |
| (Wi-Fi 3*) | 802.11g | 2003 | 2.4 | |
| Wi-Fi 4 | 802.11n | 2009 | 6.5–600 | 2.4, 5 |
| Wi-Fi 5 | 802.11ac | 2013 | 6.5–6933 | 5[a] |
| Wi-Fi 6 | 802.11ax | 2021 | 0.4–9608[1] | 2.4, 5 |
| Wi-Fi 6E | 2.4, 5, 6[b] | |||
| Wi-Fi 7 | 802.11be | exp. 2024 | 0.4–23,059 | 2.4, 5, 6[2] |
| Wi-Fi 8 | 802.11bn | exp. 2028[3] | 100,000[4] | 2.4, 5, 6[5] |
| *Wi‑Fi 0, 1, 2, and 3 are named by retroactive inference. They do not exist in the official nomenclature.[6][7][8] | ||||
IEEE 802.11ac-2013 or 802.11ac is a wireless networking standard in the IEEE 802.11 set of protocols (which is part of the Wi-Fi networking family), providing high-throughput wireless local area networks (WLANs) on the 5 GHz band.[c] The standard has been retroactively labelled as Wi-Fi 5 by Wi-Fi Alliance.[9][10]
The specification has multi-station throughput of at least 1.1 gigabit per second (1.1 Gbit/s) and single-link throughput of at least 500 megabits per second (0.5 Gbit/s).[11] This is accomplished by extending the air-interface concepts embraced by 802.11n: wider RF bandwidth (up to 160 MHz), more MIMO spatial streams (up to eight), downlink multi-user MIMO (up to four clients), and high-density modulation (up to 256-QAM).[12][13]
The Wi-Fi Alliance separated the introduction of 802.11ac wireless products into two phases ("waves"), named "Wave 1" and "Wave 2".[14][15] 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).[16] Subsequently in 2016, Wi-Fi Alliance introduced the Wave 2 certification, which includes additional features like MU-MIMO (down-link only), 160 MHz channel width support, support for more 5 GHz channels, and four spatial streams (with four antennas; compared to three in Wave 1 and 802.11n, and eight in IEEE's 802.11ax specification).[17] It meant Wave 2 products would have higher bandwidth and capacity than Wave 1 products.[18]
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