Wi-Fi 6 and Matter: The Real Plug and Play Smart Home

The COVID-19 pandemic has more people working from home, and this has accelerated the adoption of the new Wi-Fi standard (Wi-Fi 6). Consumers are upgrading home networks with this new, higher speed Wi-Fi 6, and they are enjoying the additional key benefits of its distributed architecture – ease of setup for coverage all over the house and high capacity that serves the needs of all family members – from video conferencing in the home office, to binge watching a favorite show in the living room, to hours of online gaming in an upstairs bedroom.
Until now, smart homes have been serviced by multiple, competing standards – Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth® Low Energy, Thread, etc. This fragmentation, split over multiple standards, has kept smart homes and the IoT itself from living up to its potential. Matter (formerly Project CHIP) brings Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi into one overarching standard. This paper addresses why this will enable truly smart homes.