WaveTest 6E

Problem: Measuring Wi-Fi 6E Performance Gain Under Deployment Conditions

Benchmarking Wi-Fi 6E AP performance requires a strong handle on several factors that influence the outcome—client scale, client-mix, client capabilities, traffic, QoS, SNR/RSSI, etc. Modeling real-world deployments in the lab and pushing APs to their limits just got more complex with Wi-Fi 6E and OFDMA. Testbeds relying solely on real clients or commercial chipsets often fall short creating enough variations and driving Wi-Fi networks to their capabilities.

Simulation is just one part of the story; accurate real-time measurements are critical to understanding system issues. Wi-Fi 6E promises to improve user experience by lowering latency and improving throughput. With ever-decreasing latency budgets, there is very little tolerance for error. Measuring KPIs in software often results in inaccuracies.

Highlights

• High performance Wi-Fi 6E validation with industry’s only purpose-built Wi-Fi 6E test solution

• Benchmark OFDMA and scheduler performance at high scale—500 clients per port

• Simulate real-world Wi-Fi conditions with precise control over individual client configuration

• Line-rate traffic performance measurement of Access Points across all common configurations

• Validate Wi-Fi performance across all Wi-Fi generations 6 (11ax), 5 (11ac), 4 (11n), and Legacy (a/b/g) from a single platform

• Accelerate troubleshooting with comprehensive real-time statistics and powerful capture analysis tools

Solution: Purpose-Built, Scalable, Multi-User OFDMA Wi-Fi 6E Tester

WaveTest 6E is the industry’s first purpose-built solution capable of modeling realistic deployment scenarios and measuring multi-user OFDMA performance gain. This purpose-built hardware is designed for benchmarking APs across all client configurations.

The key is to validate the access point (AP) scheduler performance by modeling the real-world network with a diverse Wi-Fi 6E and legacy client mix at varying distances from the access point. WaveTest 6E provides complete control of Wi-Fi client attributes. Real-time statistics provide critical insights that help to correlate the Wi-Fi 6E network performance across layers. A single capture view helps you debug and diagnosis multi-user OFDMA issues. With full client and test control combined with advanced analysis, this enables quicker time to resolution of problems and faster verification of Wi-Fi 6E features.

WaveTest 6E integrates client simulation, traffic generation/analysis and multi-user OFDMA packet capture capabilities in a single platform, making it a very powerful, one-stop solution for validating 802.11based products.

WaveTest 6E

The Keysight WaveTest 6E is a high-performance test solution that provides multi-client emulation for testing Access Points (APs). The WaveTest 6E delivers powerful independent Wi-Fi benchmarking, functional, soak, and stability testing for wireless local area network (WLAN) APs and home gateways.

Wi-Fi 6E is the next-generation wireless standard that’s faster than 802.11ac and introduces technology (such as Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access or OFDMA) to improve capacity, latency and efficiency in high challenge and congested areas. In dense client environments, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) goals for Wi-Fi 6E is to increase the per-user throughput by 4x while simultaneously lowering latency, thereby improving the overall user experience. With OFDMA Wi-Fi 6E can now divide a wireless channel into many subchannels. Each of these subchannels service multiple stations simultaneously.