Two decades after its implementation, WiFi technology’s adoption and evolution are not slowing down; however, challenges still face the technology that can bolster connectivity.

ABI Research forecasts that WiFi-enabled devices are set to increase from 3.3-billion unit shipments in 2019 to more than 4.5-billion yearly by 2024.

“The need for faster, more reliable, more efficient and more widespread WiFi coverage is becoming increasingly vital in a world filled with more WiFi devices at both ends of the performance spectrum, from high-throughput and low-latency applications to battery-constrained Internet of Things devices,” ABI Research says in its latest report.

The ‘Future of WiFi’ report shows that the growing reach of WiFi will be driven by a number of advancements, such as WiFi 6 and WiFi’s expansion into the 60 GHz and sub-1 GHz bands through WiGig and HaLow.

“However, the most potentially transformative change to the WiFi landscape is the anticipated availability of 6 GHz spectrum over the next few years, critical for the WiFi networks that will need significantly more spectrum in order to satisfy increased traffic demands,” the company adds.

On April 23, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to approve 1.2 GHz of unlicensed spectrum in 6 GHz available for WiFi, with other regions expected to follow.

“While the global regulatory landscape for 6 GHz outside the US is still being finalised, it is hard to overstate the potential that 6 GHz can bring to WiFi networks,” the report notes.

The technology can deliver higher throughput, much more capacity, greater reliability, lower latency and better quality of service, which can solve many of the key current challenges WiFi faces.

While ABI Research expects a significant uptake of 6 GHz-capable WiFi products from 2021 onwards, the technology is likely to still face numerous challenges over the next decade.

Key among them are the growing demands being placed on WiFi networks, leading to increased congestion, performance limitations and reduced quality of service.

It is expected that WiFi devices will account for almost half of all Internet Protocol traffic by 2020, up from 42% in 2016.

Further, Cisco expects that mobile offload will increase from 60% to 63% by 2021, with 64% of traffic from smartphones and 72% from tablets forecast to be offloaded onto WiFi, placing additional burdens on the 5 GHz band.

“The tremendous surge in active WiFi devices at home in recent months and [the] resulting increase in traffic as a result of Covid-19 have reaffirmed WiFi as a vital utility, acutely demonstrating both its importance and limitations,” ABI says.

With the explosion in traffic, cellular operators are increasingly looking to offload traffic onto WiFi, while consumers with limited data plans connect to WiFi when at home or in public areas to circumvent limitations.

However, the user experience must be comparable to that of the existing cellular network and the WiFi network must be able to accommodate this extra traffic.

“Most WiFi devices are using increasing amounts of data per device, including streaming high-resolution music and videos, video calling, application and firmware updates, digital downloads, social networking, data-heavy Web content and online gaming, besides others.”

These demands will increase over time as the resolutions increase to 4K and 8K in the future and greater performance is demanded.

In addition, the growth of cloud services and uploading of content to social media and sharing websites is also resulting in more uplink traffic.

“New WiFi standards like WiFi 6 are helping to address some of these challenges; however, there is an increasing acknowledgment that the existing unlicensed spectrum available for WiFi will be insufficient in addressing the future needs of the WiFi ecosystem,” the company points out.

The report indicates that, by 2025, at the very least, between 500 MHz and 1 GHz of additional spectrum will be required to satisfy peak use, with upper estimates placing this between 1.3 GHz and 1.8 GHz.

With the 2.4 GHz band already congested, and the growing transition to the 5 GHz band, interference from neighbouring devices is significantly impacting on performance, reducing overall throughput, increasing latency and errors, and ultimately reducing power consumption and reliability.