Qualcomm today released a series of new WiFi 6 products for networking and cellular environments. The Qualcomm Networking Pro Series and Qualcomm FastConnect 6800 Subsystem are based on completely new chipset architecture and designed to advance the adoption of WiFi 6 as 5G begins to take hold.

“Most know of us as a cellular innovator but we’ve been at this WiFi thing for a little while too,” said Jesse Burke, WiFi marketing lead at Qualcomm, during a press briefing. “As long as we’ve been pursuing a leadership role in connectivity, WiFI’s been a part of that — not just on the mobile side, but obviously on the networking side as well, and everywhere else that WiFi lives.”

While there are many strongly held beliefs about what WiFi will be in a 5G era, “the 5G era is a WiFi 6 era,” Burke said, noting that both technologies are arriving and delivering on many of the same demands at the same time.

Exponentially increasing data demands amid an explosion of devices in the home, at work, and elsewhere are “conspiring to create a situation where the networks are breaking,” Burke said. “ WiFi 4 and WiFi 5 aren’t necessarily built or conceived to handle not just the number of devices, but the complexity that this cacophony of devices actually brings upon a network.”

The same densification effect that’s driving innovation and adoption of 5G is also occurring around WiFi 6, he explained. “The implementation of key technologies like these really comes down to the pedigree of your company” and its ability “to execute on the core features of these technologies,” he said. “And increasingly the ability to execute on core features of technologies requires an acumen in more than one space. You can’t really just be a WiFi guy and expect to operate well in the cellular side and vice versa.”

This need for cross pollination between WiFi 6 and 5G is becoming increasingly self evident, Burke said. “These are two mutually beneficial technology portfolios that we leverage strongly toward each other.” Delivering strengths on both fronts is critical, especially as it relates to how a vendor implements orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (ODMA) and multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output (MU-MIMO) technologies.

The second generation of Qualcomm’s Networking Pro Platform is comprised of four product lines: the 400, 600, 800, and 1200 series. The top-tier Qualcomm Network Pro 1200 platform can support up to 12 spatial streams and up to 1,500 simultaneous users, according to the vendor. The products support 8x8 radios, MU-MIMO, OFDMA, and a WiFi 6 modulation scheme called 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) that enables up to 38% higher raw throughput compared to WiFi 5.

Qualcomm’s FastConnect 6800 Subsystem, which will eventually be attached to most of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 and 855+ designs, including nearly all 5G designs, supports uplink MU-MIMO. The FastConnect subsystem also includes Qualcomm’s integrated connectivity for Bluetooth and other non-cellular technologies within the Snapdragon platform.

Qualcomm is also playing up its strengths in this area, noting that it recently shipped its 750 millionth MU-MIMO enabled connectivity solution for client devices. The Qualcomm FastConnect 6800 system on a chip also supports 1024 QAM, 8x8 radios, OFDMA, and Bluetooth 5.1.