Qualcomm Intros Wi-Fi 6E Chips For Smartphones and Routers

If you've been holding your breath for Wi-Fi 6E, here's some excellent news. Qualcomm just announced its brand new portfolio of wireless chips that support this latest standard, the FastConnect 6900 and FastConnect 6700. The two will be used in both Wi-Fi broadcasters (routers) and receivers.

Tri-band solutions with industry-first 4K QAM

The chipmaker said that the two chips would deliver Wi-Fi 6 speeds of up to 3.6 Gbps and 3 Gbps, respectively. On top of that, they also feature Bluetooth 5.2.

Wi-Fi 6E is an extension of Wi-Fi 6 that works on the new 6 GHz frequency band. The new chips also include support for the existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band. In other words, they will work with all current Wi-Fi devices.

The two feature 160 MHz channel width on both 5 GHz and 6 GHz band and Qualcomm 4K QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation), which Qualcomm touts as an "industry-first implementation of this advanced modulation technique can extend the maximum QAM rate."

Highlights Qualcomm's new Wi-Fi 6E chips

• Tri-band with the support for the latest 6 GHz frequency to add up to 1200 MHz of additional spectrum.
• Dual-band 160 MHz supports up to seven additional non-overlapping channels in the 6 GHz band, and two 160 MHz channels on the 5 GHz band.
• Uplink / Downlink MU-MIMO and OFDMA in all three bands to increase network capacity by more than 2.5x. 
• Ultra-Low Latency: A new class of low latency—3 ms and lower—and high speed for emerging mobile applications.
• Better Bluetooth Audio: Featuring Qualcomm aptX Adaptive and Qualcomm aptX Voice, the chips can deliver wire-equivalent audio (up to 96kHz) as well as super-wideband quality calls.
• High power efficiency: Using a 14nm process node combined with advanced power-management architecture, the chips enjoy up to 50 percent improvement in power efficiency, compared to previous generation solutions.  

Availability

According to Qualcomm, the FastConnect 6900 and 6700 solutions are sampling now. They will be available in production during the second half of 2020, likely in routers first.

On the client-side, they will probably be integrated with new Snapdragon chips so you can expect them to be available first in upcoming Android phones. It's unclear if there will be add-on adapters similar to the case of the Intel AX200.