The Wi-Fi Alliance released the Wi-Fi Certified 6 program, a compliance program for devices based on IEEE 802.11ax, Monday. The new features and capabilities "enable substantially greater overall Wi-Fi network performance in challenging environments with many connected devices such as stadiums, airports, and industrial parks,” the alliance said. “High speed 5G services need Wi-Fi 6 and so do consumers who want to seamlessly share the moments they create on their mobile devices,” emailed Inkang Song, head-technology strategy group of the IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. Song noted Samsung released the Galaxy S10, the world’s first Wi-Fi 6 phone, earlier this year.

Leviton jumped on the fast-charging capability in Apple’s upcoming iPhone 11 Pro models, announcing its Dual Type-C with Power Delivery (PD) in-wall USB charger Friday. The Apple Pro Models have a lightning connector, but they'll ship with an 18-watt wall charger with a lightning to USB-connector to enable fast charging up to 50 percent power in 30 minutes, said Apple. The receptacle, with outlets for two standard power cords, has smart chip technology that recognizes and optimizes charging of a connected device, Leviton said. Built-in overcurrent protection is said to guard against electronics receiving too much power, and an internal thermo regulator prevents electronics from overheating, said the company. Major electronic device manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft are migrating to USB Type-C and PD features, said William Randall, Leviton Residential director-product management. The unit’s USB ports were tested to meet industry requirements to withstand over 10,000 insertions, and the receptacles are tamper-resistant to help prevent access by most non-rated or foreign objects, it said; it’s also compatible with USB 3.1, 3.0, 2.0 and 1.1 devices.

ON Semiconductor extended Power over Ethernet power capability to 100 watts over local area network connectors, vs. the 90 watts specified by the IEEE 802.3bt standard, it said Wednesday. The IEEE 802.3bt standard optimizes energy management through the “Autoclass” feature, which maximizes available energy and bandwidth according to the needs of connected equipment. Additional power-delivery capability defined in IEEE 802.3bt will enable new applications such as higher-powered connected lighting, networked high-resolution surveillance cameras and high-performance wireless access points, it said.

Nordic Semiconductor is developing integrated front-end solutions with its multi-protocol SoC for Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth 5 applications using Skyworks Solutions connectivity engines, said Skyworks Monday. The combined platform’s efficiency positions it for battery-powered IoT devices, delivering a quadruple range advantage in home automation, automotive, industrial, medical, wearables and mobile applications, Skyworks said. Bluetooth LE devices are forecast to reach over 1.6 billion annual shipments by 2023, it said.

Wi-Fi will drive adoption of 17 billion smart home devices by 2030, reported Strategy Analytics Wednesday. The current 802.11ac standard covers three-quarters of expected 2019 device sales, while Wi-Fi 6 will be a third of device sales by 2023, said SA. This year, smart TV devices will be 29 percent of all home Wi-Fi devices in use but overtaken by smart home devices in 2020, it said.

The Association of Global Automakers supports a rulemaking on the future of the 5.9 GHz band, but the FCC should also make clear the entire band will be retained for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, the group told an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. An NPRM should ensure “any band plan that accommodates multiple technologies avoids harmful interference between V2X services or by unlicensed services sharing the band” and allow for “evolution and backwards compatibility” in the band, the group said, posted Wednesday in docket 13-49. “V2X services will bring tremendous safety and other benefits.”

NTIA’s multistakeholder group “has reached broad consensus around the basic value of a software bill of materials,” the agency said Monday before its Thursday meeting (see 1904010057). The medical device industry delivered “a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the feasibility of an SBOM in practice.” NTIA hopes for other use cases across sectors. Office of Policy Analysis and Development Director-Cybersecurity Initiatives Allan Friedman wrote the update.

Silicon Line launched a line of integrated circuits with transmission speeds of 16 to 18 Gbps, it said Monday. The chips will be produced in single-channel and four-channel versions, enabling active optical cables with speeds up to 72 Gbps, it said. Applications include optical cables for HDMI- and DisplayPort-enabled devices and custom cables for virtual reality headsets, 4K and 8K TV and commercial products, said the company. Active optical cables using Silicon Line technology require no outside power source for converting and transmitting electrical signals as optical signals, and compared with copper wire, they're lighter and more flexible for high bandwidth applications, have a longer transmission distance and aren’t susceptible to electromagnetic interference, it said.

Shipments of Bluetooth Low Energy devices are forecast to reach 1.6 billion by 2023, a 27 percent compound annual growth rate, due to “ubiquitous support” in mobile devices, reported ABI Research Tuesday. Widespread mobile device integration and the ability to support mesh networking, beacon functionality, centimeter-level location accuracy and radio direction finding (RDF) are driving BLE’s use in smart consumer devices, large-scale home and commercial building automation environments and real-time location service deployments with stringent accuracy requirements, said analyst Andrew Zignani. Beginning next year, high-quality audio streaming over BLE could boost the headset and the emerging true wireless audio device markets, Zignani said, citing an audio-over-BLE proof of concept using Dialog’s SmartBond SoC demonstrated at CES. The researcher expects the Bluetooth audio market to take advantage of upcoming enhancements to support “truly cable-free earbud experiences," but it could take “some time for the standardization process to translate to wider mobile and ecosystem support.” BLE chipset providers continue to innovate to provide further improvements in power consumption, further extending battery life and enabling support for battery-free devices via energy harvesting, he said, mentioning Nordic Semiconductor, Dialog Semiconductor, Silicon Labs, Texas Instruments, Microchip, Cypress, STMicroelectronics, Atmosic, NXP, CEVA and Imagination as suppliers invested in the BLE ecosystem.

Demand for wired home networking devices is rising, ABI Research reported Wednesday. Increasing household device counts and multimedia and smart home applications drive a need for high data throughput, and ABI predicts Multimedia over Coax Alliance 2.5 or G.hn specification network node shipments will reach 8 million units this year. Wi-Fi has high penetration because of convenience, and newer standards and mesh networking have improved Wi-Fi home coverage, but wired connectivity can improve stability and throughput, said analyst Khin Sandi Lynn. Live video streaming, gaming and virtual reality may boost demand for reliable coverage of home networks, said the analyst, and service providers should integrate wired network devices with Wi-Fi.