NXP Semiconductors N.V. announced the availability of a comprehensive Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) portfolio, which significantly expands the number of products and markets able to adopt the latest Wi-Fi standards. NXP’s expanded Wi-Fi 6 portfolio represents the company’s new end-to-end vision and differentiated technology approach that is designed to help usher in an era of connectivity innovation for automotive, access, mobile and industrial and IoT markets.

Wi-Fi 6 delivers a wealth of additional connectivity improvements, including symmetric multi-gigabit uploads and downloads, dramatically lower latency, increased capacity and improved power efficiency across applications. These technical advancements have so far been limited to premium products. With NXP’s broad portfolio, these benefits are now available for large-scale deployment across multiple markets, enabling products with today’s most advanced Wi-Fi capabilities, including:
-    Up to 4x performance improvement 
-    Greater range
-    Improved battery life 
-    Greater connection reliability 

“To deliver Wi-Fi 6 to broader markets, OEMs need Wi-Fi 6 options that scale to their needs. They need a family of products that matches the performance and cost needs of their different market segments,” said Rafael Sotomayor, senior vice president of security and connectivity at NXP. “With NXP’s latest connectivity solutions, we are making it easier for our customers to invest in our Wi-Fi 6 platform to add Wi-Fi 6 to smart homes, connected cars and industrial machinery. We are excited to see these markets reap the networking benefit of Wi-Fi 6.”

NXP Wi-Fi 6 portfolio highlights
•    Performance leading 4 x 4 and 8 x 8-stream solutions with integrated Bluetooth 5 for home and enterprise access solutions (88W9064, 88W9068)
•    Concurrent Dual Wi-Fi 2 x 2 + 2 x 2 + Bluetooth 5 AEC-Q100 qualified solutions purpose-built for the highest performance infotainment and telematics automotive applications (88Q9098)
•    Concurrent Dual Wi-Fi 2 x 2+ 2 x 2 + Bluetooth 5 solutions that provide a best-in-class offering for multimedia streaming and consumer access applications (88W9098)
•    IoT-focused 2 x 2 WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5 optimized for cost and power
•    NXP’s RF front-end solutions portfolio based on Silicon Germanium (SiGe) can scale Wi-Fi 6 capabilities from low-to-high-end applications, including 1 x 1, 2 x 2, 4 x 4 and 8 x 8 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) solutions and is packaged in an ultra-compact 3 mm x 4 mm module optimized for the mobile solutions.

“To date, the adoption of Wi-Fi 6 has predominantly been driven by smartphones. However, we expect significant traction to build within the IoT, infrastructure and automotive markets throughout 2020 and beyond. said Andrew Zignani, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and wireless connectivity principal analyst at ABI Research. “This growth will be further driven by power- and cost-optimized chipsets such as NXP’s latest offerings, which will increase the viability of Wi-Fi for these other applications and help open up all new opportunities for the technology.”