WiFi, also known as Wi-Fi, is a trademark owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA). It is a WLAN technology based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards. Since the release of the first-generation IEEE 802.11 standard in 1997, it has been evolved to the latest 6th-generation 802.11ax standard (Wi-Fi 6). Before the release of Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi standards were identified by versions from 802.11b to 802.11ac. Later, the WFA decided to make the Wi-Fi standards easier to understand and remember for Wi-Fi users and device vendors, and therefore renamed the standards using generational numbering.
What Does Wi-Fi Stand For?
When it comes to Wi-Fi, there are two major organizations you may have already heard of: IEEE and WFA.
The IEEE established the 802.11 Working Group to develop WLAN standards in 1990, and released the first 802.11 standard (802.11-1997) for WLAN in 1997. Since then, the IEEE releases a new standard every four to five years, the latest being the 6th-generation 802.11ax standard.
802.11 standard evolution
Standard origin: 802.11-1997 defeats other standards and is first used as the WLAN standard in the industry.
Standard enhancement: 802.11b makes the large-scale commercial use of WLAN possible by delivering a rate of 11 Mbit/s. 802.11a further increases the rate to 54 Mbit/s by first introducing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology to the 802.11 standard on the 5 GHz frequency band.
Standard extension and compatibility: 802.11g extends the use of OFDM technology to the 2.4 GHz frequency band and is backward compatible with 802.11b.
High throughput (HT) standard based on MIMO-OFDM: 802.11n supports single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) and OFDM, and delivers a rate of 600 Mbit/s.
Very high throughput (VHT) standard: 802.11ac supports downlink multi-user MIMO (DL MU-MIMO), provides channel bandwidth of up to 160 MHz, and delivers a rate of 6933.33 Mbit/s.
High efficiency WLAN (HEW) standard: 802.11ax introduces technologies such as orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), uplink MU-MIMO (UL MU-MIMO), basic service set (BSS) coloring, and target wake time (TWT), further improving the throughput in high-density scenarios and increasing the rate to up to 9607.8 Mbit/s.
The WFA is a commercial organization that promotes and markets IEEE 802.11 standards as well as certifies the interoperability of 802.11 products worldwide. The WFA was originally founded to promote the formulation of the IEEE 802.11b standard. In 2000, the WFA announced its official name and adopted the term "Wi-Fi" as its trademark.
What does Wi-Fi mean? Currently, there are two arguments. One is that Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity, which is similar to High Fidelity (Hi-Fi) — a category of audio equipment. The other is that Wi-Fi has no specific meaning or full name. No organization has officially stated that Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity. Additionally, the name Wi-Fi is often written as WiFi or wifi, but these are not approved by the WFA.
For more information, see WiFi
