AltoBeam recently launched the new generation of Wi-Fi 6 low-power chip ATBM6461, which was independently developed and has complete intellectual property rights. The main selling point of this chip is WiFi6; the other is low power consumption. From these two functional points, it is almost tailor-made for low-power IPC.
WiFi IPC is the most important product line of consumer IPC, accounting for 80% of the market share, and 80% of them use WiFi4 transmission. As users have higher and higher requirements for image quality, interactive experience, and application scenarios, the market needs higher speed, lower power consumption, and more stable transmission technology. The development of WiFi6 technology can meet the needs of industry development. From WiFi, WiFi5 iteration to WiFi6, from single-band to dual-band, they are all in line with the trend of technology and standard iteration.
In the "2024 Visual IoT Consumer Market Analysis Report", we introduced that WiFi6 IPC has the following advantages over WiFi4 IPC:
1. High speed: WiFi6 is about 50% higher than WiFi4 of the same specification, ensuring a smooth video experience at the same distance.
2. Low power consumption: WiFi6 allows devices to plan communications with routers, reducing the time required to keep the antenna powered on to transmit and search for signals, which means reducing battery consumption and improving battery life performance. The actual power consumption is 20%~30% lower than WiFi4.
3. Stability: WiFi6 introduces cellular OFDMA technology to achieve high-density access routing, and parallel transmission is highly real-time. WiFi4 devices access routing by time-division multiplexing to grab network speed, so WiFi6 can solve the probabilistic disconnection and jamming problems of WiFi4.
4. Iteration trend of new and old standards: WiFi4 to WiFi6 is the iteration of new and old standards, similar to cellular 2G to 4G; as prices approach or remain the same, the iteration will be accelerated. At this stage, WiFi6 has the added advantage of differentiated competition with new selling points in addition to performance advantages compared to WiFi4.
On WiFi6, AltoBeam's data said: ATBM6461 supports all modes from MCS0 to MCS11 specified in the Wi-Fi6 protocol, and the physical layer supports modulation and demodulation up to 1024QAM, with a maximum bit rate of 287Mbps. At the same time, the ATBM6461 chip has further significantly improved the RF performance indicators to ensure that more data can be transmitted at a longer distance. ATBM6461 fully supports various advanced technologies in the Wi-Fi 6 protocol, such as LDPC encoding and decoding, Beamforming, Extended Range frame structure (ER-SU) and dual carrier modulation (DCM). Therefore, ATBM6461 can greatly improve the sensitivity index and the transceiver performance in complex network environments, and the signal coverage range can also be greatly increased.
In terms of low power consumption, for battery-powered terminal product applications, ATBM6461 pays special attention to optimizing the power consumption of the chip, and further extends the battery life by supporting the TWT function in the Wi-Fi6 protocol.
It is said that AltoBeam's new low-power WiFi6 product will soon be launched in the North American market. Recently, the main players in the domestic WiFi6 chip market include: Aikewei, Broadcom Integrated, Espressif Technology, Aojie Technology, etc. The "2025 Visual IOT Low Power Market Analysis Report" has started, and industry professionals are welcome to actively participate in our report. We will also include good products and good ideas in the report.
This paper is from Ulink Media, Shenzhen, China, the organizer of IOTE EXPO (IoT Expo in China)
