Currently, the improvements Wi-Fi 7 brings over Wi-Fi 6E are in the area of speed, which will be 2.4x faster if the same number of antennas are used on a Wi-Fi 7 product as on Wi-Fi 6E. In this article, we will introduce the changes in Wi-Fi 7 compared to Wi-Fi 6.
This new standard will also significantly reduce latency, which will help enhance the experience of applications where every millisecond counts, such as gaming.
However, the Wi-Fi Alliance is still “in the early stages of the Wi-Fi 7 standardization process” and cannot say exactly when the standard will be finalized. There are rumors that this new standard is expected to be “released in the second quarter of 2022.
Based on this timeline, the technology is expected to be available in 2023.
Huawei has the most Wi-Fi 7 technology in the world, having surpassed Qualcomm and Intel. According to Huawei, the next generation of WiFi 7 will be unveiled in 2022.
Huawei’s website shows that Huawei is continuously expanding more WiFi 7-related technologies, and compared to WiFi 6, the new channel bandwidth is up to 320MHz and the maximum transmission rate is up to 30Gbps.
Wi-Fi 7 is the upcoming next-generation Wi-Fi standard, also known as IEEE 802.11be – which boasts ultra-high throughput (EHT). It is based on Wi-Fi 6 and introduces 320MHz bandwidth, 4096 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), multiple resource unit (RU), multi-link operation (MLO), enhanced multi-user multiplexing, and other technologies. Input multiple output (MU-MIMO) and multiple access point (AP) coordination. With these cutting-edge technologies, Wi-Fi 7 offers higher data rates and lower latency than Wi-Fi 6. It is expected to support up to 30 Gbps of throughput, about three times that of Wi-Fi.
Why do we need Wi-Fi 7?
With the development of WLAN technology, homes and businesses are increasingly relying on Wi-Fi for network access. In recent years, emerging applications have placed higher demands on throughput and latency. Typical examples of these applications include 4K and 8K video (involving transmission rates of up to 20 Gbps), virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR), online gaming (requiring latency of less than 5 ms), telecommuting, online video conferencing, and cloud computing.
In the face of such high demands, Wi-Fi 6 – currently the latest Wi-Fi standard – is not enough, despite its commitment to improving the user experience in high-density scenarios. As a result, IEEE is about to release a new amendment called IEEE 802.11be EHT, also known as Wi-Fi 7.
Release Date
The IEEE 802.11be Task Group (TGbe) was formally established in May 2019 to work on the development of 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7).
The standard will be available in Release 1 and Release 2. The TGbe plans to release draft 1.0 of 802.11be in 2021, with Release 1 available by the end of 2022. Version 2 is expected to be launched in early 2022 and will be released in late 2024.
Wi-Fi 7 vs. Wi-Fi 6
Wi-Fi 7 is based on the Wi-Fi 6 standard and introduces several new technologies.
What’s new in Wi-Fi 7
Wi-Fi 7 aims to increase WLAN throughput to 30 Gbps and provide guaranteed low-latency access. To achieve this goal, the standard defines modifications to the physical layer (PHY) and MAC layer. Compared to Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7 brings the following technical innovations.
Up to 320 MHz of bandwidth: The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands are restricted and congested unlicensed spectrum. Existing Wi-Fi networks inevitably experience low quality of service (QoS) issues when running emerging applications such as VR/AR. To achieve a maximum of 30 Gbps throughput, Wi-Fi 7 will support the 6 GHz band and expand with new bandwidth modes including contiguous 240 MHz, non-contiguous 160+80 MHz, contiguous 320 MHz, and non-contiguous 160+160 MHz.
Multi-RU: In Wi-Fi 6, each user could only send or receive frames on the RU assigned to them, which greatly limited the flexibility of spectrum resource scheduling. To address this issue and further improve spectrum efficiency, Wi-Fi 7 defines a mechanism that allows multiple RUs to be assigned to a single user. to balance implementation complexity and spectrum utilization, the standard specification imposes certain restrictions on RU combinations. That is, a small RU (containing less than 242 tones) can only be combined with a small RU, and a large RU (containing greater than or equal to 242 tones) can only be combined with a large RU. Small RUs and large RUs can be combined.
High-order 4096-QAM: The highest-order modulation supported by Wi-Fi 6 is 1024-QAM, which allows each modulated signal to carry up to 10 bits. To further increase the rate, Wi-Fi 7 introduces 4096-QAM, which allows each modulated signal to carry 12 bits. With the same encoding, 4096-QAM in Wi-Fi 7 can achieve a 20% rate increase over 1024-QAM in Wi-Fi 6.
Multi-link mechanisms: To efficiently utilize all available spectrum resources, there is an urgent need for the industry to introduce new spectrum management, coordination and transmission mechanisms in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands. tGbe defines multi-link aggregation technologies, including enhanced multi-link aggregation, multi-link channel access, and MAC architecture for multi-link transmission.
More data streams and enhanced MIMO: Wi-Fi 7 increases the number of spatial streams from 8 to 16, with more than twice the theoretical physical transmission rate of Wi-Fi 6. With the increased number of data streams, Wi-Fi 7 supports distributed multiple-input multiple-output. That is, multiple access points can provide 16 data streams at the same time, which means multiple APs need to coordinate with each other.
Multi-AP coordination: In the current 802.11 protocol framework, there is not much coordination between APs. Common WLAN features, such as automatic radio calibration and intelligent roaming, are vendor-defined features. Multi-AP coordination aims to optimize channel selection and adjust the load between APs for efficient utilization and balanced allocation of wireless resources. It coordinated scheduling between multiple APs in Wi-Fi 7 includes inter-cell coordination planning in both time and frequency domains, inter-cell interference coordination, and distributed MIMO. This reduces interference between APs and greatly improves the utilization of air port resources. Multi-AP coordination can be achieved by various methods, such as coordinated orthogonal frequency division multiple access (C-OFDMA), coordinated spatial multiplexing (CSR), coordinated beamforming (CBF)
Application Scenarios
Wi-Fi 7 introduces new features that will significantly increase data transfer rates and provide lower latency. These highlights will assist in the development of emerging applications.
- Video streaming
- Video/voice conferencing
- Online gaming
- Real-time collaboration
- Cloud/edge computing
- Industrial IoT
- Immersive augmented reality/virtual reality
- Interactive Telemedicine
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