Recently, China Information and Communication Institute released the Global Wi-Fi 6 technological Innovation and Standard essential Patent Analysis report (2022). Based on the necessary patent data of the evaluated Wi-Fi 6 standard, the report makes a statistical analysis based on the dimensions of priority year, legal status, layout region, patentee and technology, in order to show the innovation activities and development trends of global Wi-Fi 6.

Wi-Fi has a history of more than 20 years. In 2018, in order to improve the recognition and recognition of Wi-Fi technology, the Wi-Fi Alliance, an important international organization in the field of Wi-Fi, decided to adopt a new naming rule to identify the 802.11 standard, which draws lessons from the naming method of cellular mobile communication 2G~5G, renames 802.11ax to Wi-Fi6, and calls the first two generations of 802.11 standards 802.1lac and 802.11n Wi-Fi5 and Wi-Fi4 respectively. By 2019, with the launch of the Wi-Fi6 interoperability certification and testing specification by the Wi-Fi Alliance, it marks the arrival of the first year of Wi-Fi6 business.

Wi-Fi6 provides the theoretical highest rate up to 9.6Gbps. Through the introduction of key technologies such as orthogonal frequency division multiple access and uplink multi-user multi-input and multi-output, Wi-Fi6 can effectively improve the rate, capacity and efficiency, and enhance energy saving, coverage and security to meet the access needs of users in equipment-intensive scenarios such as shopping malls, factories and offices. It also enables the deployment of all kinds of new application scenarios with high speed, large capacity and low power consumption requirements.

Wi-Fi6 provides the theoretical highest rate up to 9.6Gbps. Through the introduction of key technologies such as orthogonal frequency division multiple access and uplink multi-user multi-input and multi-output, Wi-Fi6 can effectively improve the rate, capacity and efficiency, and enhance energy saving, coverage and security to meet the access needs of users in equipment-intensive scenarios such as shopping malls, factories and offices. It also enables the deployment of all kinds of new application scenarios with high speed, large capacity and low power consumption requirements.At present, Wi-Fi6 chips generally use 16nm, 22nm, 28nm or higher process. According to the forecast of ABIResearch, global shipments of Wi-Fi6 chips are expected to grow from 400m in 2020 to 3.3 billion in 2025.

From the perspective of equipment layer, the price of Wi-Fi6 home router has gradually dropped from the high price at the beginning of commercial use to a reasonable price, and has replaced Wi-Fi5 as the first choice for consumers. In terms of enterprise routers, research by Del'OroGroup Market Research shows that 90% of enterprises are expected to deploy Wi-Fi 6 by 2023.

From the point of view of standard essential patentsA total of 2115 Chinese and English authorized patents of the Wi-Fi6 patent family were selected for evaluation, of which a total of 606 patents were assessed as the necessity of the Wi-Fi6 standard, including 3564 valid patents / patent applications.

Among themThe United States ranks first in the number of applications, accounting for 31.9%, while China ranks second in applications, accounting for 14.9%Europe, South Korea and Japan accounted for 13.7%, 8.7% and 8.2% of patent applications, respectively. Another 22.6% of patents are distributed in 33 other countries or regions in the world, including Brazil, Canada and Australia.

Among the enterprises that have contributed to the standard proposal, the total number of necessary patent families of the Wi-Fi6 standard held by eight enterprises exceeds 90% of the total number of necessary patent families of the Wi-Fi6 standard in this evaluation.The eight companies are Qualcomm, Huawei, Intel, LG, Marvell/NXP, MediaTek, Broadcom and ZTE. Among them, Qualcomm ranked first, accounting for 20.46%, and Huawei ranked second, accounting for 20.30%.

From the time distribution of 606 family patents, before IEEE started the standardization of 802.11ax (Wi-Fi6) in 2013, enterprises had already started the pre-research of Wi-Fi6 standard, and laid out a small number of necessary patents of Wi-Fi6 standard. After 2013, enterprises not only actively participate in standard-setting, but also concentrate on the layout of Wi-Fi 6 standard essential patents, and reach the peak of applications in 2015, and then begin to decrease year by year.