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Data analysis: essentiality report
on Wi-Fi 6 patents 2021
Yuji Orita and Toshihiro Nakane of NGB Corporation analyse the patent
landscape for the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard, IEEE802.11ax

This report is an updated version of ourEssentiality Report on Wi-Fi 6 Patents,
published in September 2020, and shows
the latest status of Wi-Fi 6 standardessential patents (SEPs).

Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)
What is it?
Today, Wi-Fi is available at home, office, school,
restaurants and stores as standard; it is a well-known
technology.
Wi-Fi standards are set by the Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers (IEEE), and letters after IEEE
802.11 indicate the generation of the Wi-Fi standards.
The official name of the Wi-Fi 6 standard isIEEE802.11ax. Wi-Fi is also the brand name used by
the Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group that aims to promote the technology.
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PATENTS WIFI 6

Figure 1: Number of contributions in Wi-Fi 6: top 20
contributors

in TGax and the HEW SG by using the IEEE official
website (see Figure 1). If there were multiple versions ina single contribution, the multiple versions were countedtogether as one contribution.
Figure 1 shows the cumulative number of contributions
published from 2013 to 2021, i.e., the top 20 contributors up to March 2021. The red bars show the cumulative number of contributions submitted by November
2016, when Draft 1.0 was released, and the blue bars
show the contributions submitted after that date. Draft
1.0 defines most of the basic features; and some chipset
companies started to design new chips around the release of the Draft 1.0. Huawei was in the leading position before Draft 1.0 was released. Qualcomm, in firstplace overall, has increased the number of contributions
especially after Draft 1.0 was released (See figure 1).

IEEE802.11ax is the latest Wi-Fi standard in practice,and Wi-Fi 6 technology offers benefits such as higher
data rates, increased capacity, performance in environments with many connected devices, and improved
power efficiency. In addition, the main functions include OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access), MU-MIMO (downlink multi-user multiple
input, multiple output), beamforming, 160 MHz (160MHz channel bandwidth), target wake time, BSS
colouring, 8 spatial streams, and 1024-QAM (1024
quadrature amplitude modulation mode).
Thus, Wi-Fi 6 technology can be applied to a wide
range of use cases, for example, in a high-density environment with a lot of people in a stadium or an educational site, or with a lot of devices in a manufacturing
facility.
It is expected that there will be more than 13 billion WiFi 6 devices shipped by 2026 with a growth rate ofaround ~26% between 2020 and 2026.
Wi-Fi 6 standardisation activities in IEEEand key players
To further improve the efficiency of Wi-Fi, shortly after
the release of IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) in March 2013,
IEEE 802.11 set up a study group (SG) named HEW(High-Efficiency Wireless). In March 2014, the IEEE
802 executive committee approved the PAR (ProjectAuthorisation Request) of the HEW SG, and the802.11 Task Group ax (TGax) was formed to develop
the technical specification. IEEE 802.11ax released
Draft 1.0 in November 2016, Draft 2.0 in October 2017,
Draft 3.0 in June 2018, Draft 4.0 in January 2019, Draft
5.0 in September 2019, Draft 6.0 in November 2019,
Draft 7.0 in August 2020, and Draft 8.0 in November
2020. IEEE 802.11ax was finally accepted as a standard
on February 9 2021 and it was published on May 19.
To understand the key players in the Wi-Fi 6 standardisation activities, we analysed the number of contributions
2 M a na g i ng IP. co m WINT ER 2021

Purpose of analysing essentiality of Wi-Fi 6related patent families
We aim to clarify the current status of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families by manually making technical essentiality searchesof Wi-Fi 6 related patent families.
The terms ‘Wi-Fi 6 related patent family’ and ‘Wi-Fi 6
SEP family’ used in this report have the followingmeanings:• Wi-Fi 6 related patentfamily means an active granted
patent family (i) which has at least one granted
patent in the US, EPO, Japan, China and Korea as ofApril 1 2021, where the active granted patent family
has a specification including keywords relating to‘802.11ax’ (e.g., TGax, HEW, 802.11ax), and (ii)which lists at least one participant who attended
TGax from the top 20 contributors in Figure 1 as aninventor of the active granted patent family.
• Wi-Fi 6 SEP family means a patent family with agranted patent of which independent claim(s) substantially read onto features of the target standard asa result of our manual essentiality review of thegranted patent in the Wi-Fi 6 related family.
This report does not consider the validity of each WiFi 6 SEP.
Our challenge was to identify the Wi-Fi 6 related patentfamilies where almost all patent owners relating to WiFi 6 submitted a blanket declaration without listing anypatent according to the IEEE IPR policy (see below).
For reference, we can easily identify declared patents in3GPP since patent owners have to specify all patents tobe declared according to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI) IPR policy.
We hope that this report highlights the current situationof the Wi-Fi 6 SEP race, and helps many stakeholders
relating to Wi-Fi 6 to have more practical discussions
and make better determinations.

PATENTS WIFI 6

Patent analysis methodology
Method of retrieving Wi-Fi 6 related patentfamilies
IEEE permits blanket declarations that do not disclose
specific patent numbers in SEP declarations. While blanket declarations provide broader FRAND assurances topatentees, they bring difficulty in seeing the landscape of
SEP ownership by not identifying specific patents.
To retrieve Wi-Fi 6 related patent families, we focusedon patents filed by the top 20 contributors in Figure 1,
which include participants attending the TGax, to makea population, and added to the population patents withkeywords relating to 802.11ax to get a final population.
The Wi-Fi 6 related patent families have at least one
granted patent in the US, EPO, Japan, China and Korea.
We executed the search by using the Questel Orbit database on April 1 2021.
Method of essentiality review for Wi-Fi 6
related patent families
The essentiality of each Wi-Fi 6 related patent family(4,919 in total) for the Wi-Fi 6 standard was determined by comparison with the target standard documents. In our previous report published in September
2020, Wi-Fi 6 related patent families as of April 62020
were analysed by comparison with the draft version ofWi-Fi 6 IEEE P802.11ax™/D6.0 and IEEE
P802.11REVmd/D3.0. In this report, Wi-Fi 6 related
patent families which were newly granted between
April 72020 and April 12021 in the Questel Orbit database were analysed by comparison with the latest draft
version of Wi-Fi 6 IEEE P802.11ax™/D8.0, which isequivalent to the officially approved IEEE 802.11ax. In
more detail, the following steps were used to extract WiFi 6 SEP families.
Step 1: Relevancy check• Our analysts conducted a manual review of Wi-Fi 6
related patent families to identify the relevant patentdata. The relevancy check of each patent was conducted to ascertain its relevancy to various aspectsof the target standard.
• The relevancy review was performed based on analysis of one representative granted patent per family.
Further, the review was primarily based on analysisof the title, abstract, and claim(s) of each representative granted patent. When necessary, our analysts
also referred to the specification of the representative granted patent.
• For each patent family, the representative granted
patent for this step was the latest granted patent in
the US, EPO, Japan, China and Korea as of April 1
2021, and active (not lapsed nor expired) as of thesame date.
• The representative granted patent published in languages other than English was analysed using machine-translated text obtained from Espacenet.

Step 2: Substantive analysis (essentiality analysis andcategorisation)• The relevant patent data from Step 1 was consideredin this phase. The substantive analysis included essentiality analysis and categorisation as follows.
• Essentiality analysis:• For determining the essentiality of each relevant
patent family from Step 1, our analysts compared
the independent claim(s) of the representative
granted patent with one or more technical features present in the target standard. Based on theextent of overlap between the independent claim
and the identified features, we determined a WiFi 6 related patent family as essential when therepresentative granted patent’s independentclaim(s) substantially read onto features of thetarget standard.
• The Wi-Fi 6 related patent families as of April 62020 in our previous report published in September 2020 were analysed by comparison with thedraft version of Wi-Fi 6 IEEE P802.11ax™/D6.0
and IEEE P802.11REVmd/D3.0.
• Wi-Fi 6 related patent families which were newly
recorded between April 7 2020 and April 1 2021
in the Questel Orbit database were analysed bycomparison with the latest draft version of Wi-Fi
6 IEEE P802.11ax™/D8.0. The newly granted
family includes those first granted in the five countries after April 6 2020 and those newly granted
after April 6 2020 in a different country to thecountry having the granted patent of the Wi-Fi 6
related patent family in our previous report.
• Categorisation:• Each relevant patent family from Step 1 was manually reviewed and categorised into one or more
relevant technical categories listed below.
• First dimension• PHY (Physical Layer)• MAC (Medium Access Control Layer)• Second dimension• OFDMA• MU-MIMO• Beamforming• 160MHz• Target wake time
• BSS colouring• 8 spatial streams• 1024-QAM• The categorisation was performed based on manual review of the representative granted patent perpatent family. Further, the categorisation was primarily based on analysis of the title, abstract, andclaim(s) of each representative granted patent.
When necessary, our analysts also referred to thespecification of the representative granted patent.
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PATENTS WIFI 6

Landscape of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families
Wi-Fi 6 SEP owners ranking
The total number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families of the top 20
contributors was 645 as of April 1 2021, an increase of28 (+4.5%) compared with our previous report. Figure2 shows a ranking of the top eight companies by families. Qualcomm and Huawei, with more than 120 WiFi 6 SEP families, lead the way followed by Intel, LG
Electronics, Newracom, and Marvell. This is mainly because Qualcomm and Huawei have submitted the mostcontributions in TGax and HEW SG for Wi-Fi 6 (seeFigure 1). The number of families of Marvell includes
the patent families transferred from the company toNXP Semiconductors.
Figure 2: Wi-Fi 6 SEP owners ranking
Wi-Fi 6 SEPsQUALCOMM

Correlation between the number ofcontributions and the number of Wi-Fi 6SEP families
Figure 4 shows that there is a positive correlation between the number of contributions in Wi-Fi 6 and thenumber of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families for the top eight companies, while we can see a deviation depending on thecompany.
Categorisation of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families
PHY/MAC

Figures 5 and 6 show the number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families relating to PHY and MAC (i.e., the first dimension)respectively. Huawei is in the leading position inPHY,followed by LG, Intel, and Qualcomm. Qualcomm is top in MAC, followed by Huawei and Intel.
Figure 5: Number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families
relating to PHY

NumberProportion

12319.1%

Wi-Fi 6 SEPs (PHY)
Number

Proportion

HUAWEI

12218.9%

INTEL

10215.8%

HUAWEI

6118.6%LG ELECTRONICS

9314.4%LG ELECTRONICS

5918.0%NEWRACOM

568.7%

INTEL

57

17.4%

MARVELL/NXP

446.8%QUALCOMM

5215.9%MEDIATEK

182.8%NEWRACOM

309.1%BROADCOM/AVAGO

172.6%MARVELL/NXP

24

7.3%

Others70

10.9%

MEDIATEK

123.7%BROADCOM/AVAGO

123.7%

Others

216.4%

Cumulative number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP
families
Figure 3 shows the cumulative number of Wi-Fi 6
SEP families owned by each company in terms ofpriority year. Because this analysis is based on
granted patent families as of April 1 2021 and does
not count patent families with only pending
applications under examination, we can see that
there are few increases in the number of families
from 2016 to 2019. HEW SG started its activity toconsider the improvement of spectrum efficiency toenhance the system throughput/area in high density
scenarios of APs and/or STAs in May 2013, TGax
discussions started in May 2014, and the first draft(Draft 1.0) was released in November 2016. Hence,
there seems to be an increased number of Wi-Fi 6
SEP families around the years 2014, 2015, and 2016,as they laid the basic building blocks for Draft 1.0.
Qualcomm and Huawei rank highest in terms of thenumber of Wi-Fi SEP families filed in and after 2014
(See figure 3).
4 M a na g i ng IP. co m WINT ER 2021

Figure 6: Number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families
relating to MAC
Wi-Fi 6 SEPs (MAC)
NumberProportionQUALCOMM

71

22.5%

HUAWEI

62

19.6%

INTEL4514.2%

LG ELECTRONICS

3410.8%NEWRACOM

268.2%MARVELL/NXP

196.0%BROADCOM/AVAGO

72.2%

MEDIATEK

61.9%

Others46

14.6%

PATENTS WIFI 6Figure 3: Cumulative number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families
counted by priority year

OFDMAFigure 7 shows the number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families relating to OFDMA, MU-MIMO, beamforming,
160MHz, target wake time, BSS colouring, 8 spatial
streams, and 1024-QAM. As shown in Figure 7,
OFDMA has the highest number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families in the second dimension and contributes more thanhalf of the total Wi-Fi 6 SEP families. The Wi-Fi 6 standard specifies an enhancement to MU-MIMO in a previous-generation standard, based on a new accessmechanism of OFDMA, so MU-MIMO SEP families
have a big overlap with OFDMA SEP families. In thissection, the analysis focuses on the Wi-Fi 6 SEP families
relating to OFDMA. OFDMA is a multiple accessmode in 802.11ax and was first introduced into a WiFi system. OFDMA more effectively shares channels toincrease network efficiency and lower latency for bothuplink and downlink traffic in high demand environments.
Figure 8 shows the top eight companies in terms of thenumber of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families relating to OFDMA.
Among the top companies, Huawei holds the highest
number, followed by Intel, Qualcomm, and LG.

Figure 4: Correlation between the number ofcontributions and the number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families

Figure 8: OFDMA related Wi-Fi 6 SEP
owners ranking
Wi-Fi 6 SEPs (OFDMA)
Number
Proportion
HUAWEI

83

21.8%

INTEL

62

16.3%

QUALCOMM

5815.2%LG ELECTRONICS

5715.0%NEWRACOM

338.7%MARVELL/NXP

236.0%BROADCOM/AVAGO

153.9%MEDIATEK

102.6%

Others4010.5%Figure 7: Number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families in the second
dimension

Takeaways
Qualcomm and Huawei still lead the SEP race for WiFi-6 technology, according to our analysis results. Qualcomm has 123 Wi-Fi 6 SEP families, one more than its
Chinese rival Huawei. Intel comes in third with 102,
followed by LG Electronics (93) and Newracom (56).
The key takeaways are as follows:
1. The total number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP families of the top
20 contributors is 645 as of April 1 2021, which isan increase of 28 (+4.5%) compared with our previous report.
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PATENTS WIFI 6

2. There is a positive correlation between the numberof contributions in Wi-Fi 6 and the number of WiFi 6 SEP families.
3. Huawei leads the way in the number of Wi-Fi 6 SEP
families relating to PHY, followed by LG, Intel, andQualcomm. Qualcomm is top for the number offamilies relating to MAC, followed by Huawei andIntel.
4. OFDMA is a focused area in Wi-Fi 6 SEPs, andHuawei ranks highest here, followed by Intel, Qualcomm, and LG.

6 M a na g i ng IP. co m WINT ER 2021

We hope that this report helps many stakeholders relating to Wi-Fi 6 technology to have more practical discussions and make better determinations.

YujiOrita

Toshihiro
NakaneYuji Orita is generalmanger, and Toshihiro
Nakane manager, at IP
research institute NGB
Corporation in Tokyo.