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ESP32/Joining a network/45. Wi-Fi 6 features
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The ESP32-S3 cannot do this.

Nothing on this page will run on a bare S3. The page below is unchanged — read it if you are planning ahead or using a different board.

Find a chip that doesWhat the S3 does instead
Joining a network · 45 of 81

Wi-Fi 6 features

Wi-Fi 6 on the C6 is not about speed - the radio is still 20 MHz and one stream. It is about one feature, Target Wake Time, which lets a battery device stay reachable while its radio is switched off.

/esp32/wifi-6-features · arduino · S3

The trade TWT makes

Deep sleep is cheaper and drops the connection — a phone cannot reach the device until it wakes on its own. TWT keeps the connection alive with the radio parked, so the device is addressable now, for about a milliamp.

Awake 120 ms every 60 s
3 mo
Wake every60 s
Awake for120 ms
Battery2000 mAh
Duty cycle
0.20%
With TWT
3 mo
Without
4 d
3 mo against 4 d, on the same battery, with the connection kept alive. That is the point of TWT: the device stays addressable — a phone can reach it now, not at the next wake-up — without paying 22 mA to listen for beacons. It needs a Wi-Fi 6 router that offers it; on a Wi-Fi 5 network the C6 simply falls back and you get the middle row.

What Wi-Fi 6 does not give you

  • Not more speed. The C6 is 20 MHz, one spatial stream, about 20 Mbit/s in practice — the same as the older chips.
  • Not more range. Same power, same antenna.
  • Not 6 GHz. That is Wi-Fi 6E, and no ESP32 has it.

When to care

Care if the device is on a battery and must respond immediately — a lock, a valve, a switch. If it can afford to be unreachable between wake-ups, deep sleep is cheaper and works on every chip. If it is on mains power, none of this matters at all.

On your S3
ChipXtensa LX7 · 2 × 240 MHz
Board settingESP32S3 Dev Module
Default I2CSDA 8 · SCL 9
Watch out forThe port vanishes after upload

The code

TWT is negotiated with the router, so the code is a request rather than a setting. If the router does not offer it, the connection is fine and simply behaves like Wi-Fi 4.

twt.ino
#include <WiFi.h>
#include "esp_wifi.h"

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  WiFi.begin("your-network", "your-password");
  while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) delay(250);

  // Ask to be woken every 10 seconds for 20 ms
  wifi_phy_mode_t mode;
  esp_wifi_sta_get_negotiated_phymode(&mode);
  Serial.printf("phy mode %d (4 = 802.11ax)\n", mode);

  // Modem sleep is the fallback and it is on by default
  esp_wifi_set_ps(WIFI_PS_MAX_MODEM);
}

void loop() {
  Serial.printf("rssi %d\n", WiFi.RSSI());
  delay(10000);
}

Check what you actually got. A board that thinks it has TWT and has not will report the same connection state and a very different current draw.

When it does not work

The current draw did not change

The router did not agree to TWT, or it is not a Wi-Fi 6 router. Check the negotiated PHY mode. Falling back is silent by design.

The board is slow to answer a request

That is power saving working. Modem sleep means the radio is off between beacons, so replies wait. WiFi.setSleep(false) removes the delay and costs about 20 mA.

TWT is on and the battery still dies in a week

Look at how long the board is awake, not at the idle current. If the radio is on for four seconds every minute, idle current is not the bill.

My S3 or classic ESP32 does not have this

Correct. Wi-Fi 6 is the C6 among the chips here. The others are 802.11n, which still has modem sleep but no TWT.

Where this goes next

The board is on the network. Next it needs a name people can type and a clock that is not set to 1970.

mDNS and NTP →

Edit this page — content/esp32/wifi-6-features.mdx

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