Forbes Column

December 15, 2020
Yes, 5G Is Great, But WiFi And Bluetooth Really Matter Too

By Bob O'Donnell

In an era where there has been a tremendous amount of focus on wireless technology overall, it’s sometimes easy to forget that there’s more to new wireless innovations than just 5G. To be clear, the latest cellular technology is extremely important and, in the long run, is expected to have some of the most profound impacts on not just the tech industry, but also general business and society as a whole.

In the near term, however, there are two other key wireless technologies that are likely seeing more actual usage—especially in our work-from-home, learn-from-home, and generally stay-at-home worlds: WiFi and Bluetooth. WiFi, of course, has become a critical lifeline for all our connected-at-home activities and Bluetooth provides the device-to-device connectivity that makes using everything from smartphones, PCs, speakers, headphones and other gadgets easier and more compelling.

What many people don’t realize, however, is that just as there have been important innovations in cellular technology with 5G, the standards behind both WiFi and Bluetooth have been advancing and improving as well. The WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E standards in particular (see “New WiFi 6E Standard Brings 5G-Related Technologies To Local Area Wireless” for more) offer a number of impressive new capabilities and the potential for significantly faster data transfers over WiFi connections. In fact, it’s possible to start seeing speeds well over 2 Gbps, which even makes current 5G transmission speeds start to look a bit slow. In addition, the latest version 5.2 of the Bluetooth standard brings with it support for true stereo connections to ear buds and other listening devices, as well as important improvements in range and reliability.

As important as these standards are, it’s the real-world implementation of them in chips like Qualcomm’s FastConnect 6900 that help bring them to life. The 6900 is available as a standalone component that can be incorporated into smartphones, PCs, and other types of devices, and its full capabilities are also incorporated into Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 SOC (System on Chip), which is expected to start showing up in premium smartphones starting in early 2021. In other words, the 888 not only has the latest 5G technologies, with its X60 5G modem and RF (Radio Frequency) system, it’s also got the latest versions of WiFi and Bluetooth. This is one of the main reasons why it received so much positive attention when it was first unveiled a few weeks back.

What’s interesting about the FastConnect 6900 is that it integrates a number of key “under the hood” technologies to help improve its performance on both WiFi and Bluetooth connections. On the WiFi side, in addition to being one of the first chips to support the enormous 1.2 GHz of radio spectrum around the 6 GHz band that WiFi 6E enables, it also provides support for 160 MHz-wide channels, not only at 6 GHz but also in the existing 5 GHz spectrum used by earlier versions of WiFi. Wireless transmission technologies like WiFi use these channels essentially like “lanes” for data traffic, and previous iterations of WiFi chips have been limited to 80 MHz-wide channels. Doubling the width of these channels offers not only the possibility for faster WiFi speeds and higher overall throughput but also reduces the potential for interference from other channels. This, in turn, can lead to less latency, which is critical for applications like cloud-based gaming and viewing content on VR headsets.

In addition to wider channels, another critical new technology for improving latency is called 4K QAM, and it refers to a wireless signal modulation technique that can pack more information over existing connections. To complete to the package, the FastConnect 6900 also features a technology called 4-Stream DBS (Dual-Band Simultaneous) that can combine the bandwidth of several different WiFi 6 channels in a manner that’s conceptually similar to how carrier aggregation (CA) works on cellular network connections.

On the Bluetooth side, in addition to implementing the 5.2 technology additions, such as Isochronous Channels (ISOC), the FastConnect 6900 supports dual Bluetooth antennas and advanced signal modulation techniques for improving range and avoiding the still-too-common problem of Bluetooth dropouts that many of us have faced. The chip also provides support for the complete Bluetooth LE Audio spec, including a Broadcast function that lets an audio signal be shared with and received by multiple devices within range of the transmission.

All told, the range of connectivity options offered in the 6900 alone, plus everything incorporated into the Snapdragon 888, is extensive. Importantly, it also brings a new level of ubiquity and performance to wireless signals of many types, turning devices that leverage these chips into more powerful, more productive, and more reliable tools. Given our growing dependence on all things wireless, that’s an important step forward.

Disclosure: TECHnalysis Research is a tech industry market research and consulting firm and, like all companies in that field, works with many technology vendors as clients, some of whom may be listed in this article.

Here’s a link to the original column: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobodonnell/2020/12/15/yes-5g-is-great-but-wifi-and-bluetooth-really-matter-too/

Forbes columnist Bob O'Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community.