What is all the hype around WiFi 7?

WiFi 6 is still in the early stages of adoption and Qualcomm has already announced that it is working on the next-generation of WiFi called WiFi 7. Qualcomm said that it is focused on bringing extreme speeds and capacity along with low-latency performance with WiFi 7. “We are working closely with all the IEEE and WFA members to finalise Wi-Fi 7,” Qualcomm wrote in a blog post.

Interestingly, this development comes roughly a month after MediaTek made a similar announcement. “MediaTek today announced the world’s first live demo of Wi-Fi 7 technology, highlighting the capabilities of its forthcoming Wi-Fi 7 Filogic connectivity portfolio,” the chipmaker wrote in a blog post.

“MediaTek has been involved in the development of the Wi-Fi 7 standard since its inception, and the company is one of the first adopters of Wi-Fi 7 technology,” it added.

Interestingly, while Qualcomm didn’t share a tentative timeline when its WiFi 7-enabled products will be available in the market, MediaTek said that products with Wi-Fi 7 are expected to hit the market starting in 2023.

Needless to say that chipmakers are betting big on this next-generation of WiFi even though WiFi 6 is still new in the market, while WiFi 6E hasn’t even started making its presence felt. Before we try to understand how this upcoming WiFi standard is different than the existing WiFi 6 standard, let’s first understand what WiFi 7 claims to offer.

What is WiFi 7?

WiFi 7 also known as IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) is a WiFi standard that is capable of delivering high speed internet, low latency and more stable connections than its predecessors. Unlike the older WiFi standards — including WiFi 6 — that offer just two frequency bands (2.4GHz and 5GHz), WiFi 7 utilises three frequency bands – 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz – with speeds reaching up to 30GHz, which is comparable to the speed offered by Thunderbolt 3 port.

WiFi 7 offers several features that could make it a game changer as far as connectivity is concerned. It offers multi-link capability that enables it to utilise the three frequency bands more efficiently. Qualcomm in its blog post explained that a device with WiFi 7 is capable of using each band as it becomes available and that it can operate on both frequency bands simultaneously, aggregating throughput across both, because of which it will be better at avoiding congestion.

In addition to this, WiFi 7, when available, will expand the bandwidth to 320MHz as against 160MHz available at the moment. “Some regions can support three channels of 320 MHz contiguous spectrum, others one, and some none at all,” Qualcomm wrote.

Lastly, Wi-Fi 7 uses a trick called “Preamble puncturing”, enables a device to use the spectrum beyond interference, which gives users a more continuous interference-free experience.

Simply said, WiFi 7 is capable of solving all your connectivity woes by offering faster network speed, more bandwidth and utilising the network bandwidth more efficiently.

How is WiFi 7 different from WiFi 6?

WiFi 7 is faster and more efficient than WiFi 6 or IEEE 802.11ax. According to MediaTek, WiFi 7 is capable of delivering two times faster speed than WiFi 6.

“Wi-Fi 7 will deliver 2.4X faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6 – even with the same number of antennas – since Wi-Fi 7 can utilize 320Mhz channels and support 4K quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technology,” MediaTek said last month.

While WiFi 6 offers a maximum transmission speed of 9.6GHz, WiFi 7 takes it up to 30GHz. In addition to that while WiFi 7 uses 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz frequency bands, WiFi 6 uses only 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands. Both these standards offer WPA3 security protocols.

WiFi 7 also offers better bandwidth. While WiFi 7 is capable of offering up to 320MHz bandwidth in all the three frequency bands simultaneously, WiFi 6 is capable of offering up to 160MHz bandwidth in a single frequency band at a time.

Then how is WiFi 6 different from WiFi 6E?

As far as WiFi 6E is concerned, it is not a new generation of WiFi standard. Rather, it is an extension of WiFi 6. The ‘E’ in WiFi 6E stands for Extended. It offers the 6 GHz frequency band in addition to offering the currently supported 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands in WiFi 6E. As Cisco explains it, “Wi-Fi 6E essentially creates a “fast lane” for compatible devices and applications. The result: faster wireless speeds and lower latency.”

It offers less interference owing to the availability of more bandwidth. It is also capable of supporting a dense IT and Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem without taking a hit on the performance.

Where will WiFi 7 be used?

WiFi 7, as mentioned before, will offer high network speed and low latency and it will be used in a variety of fields including extended reality or XR, metaverse, social gaming, cloud computing, AR/VR experience, Industrial IoT, and video streams among others.

That said, WiFi is still in the formulation stage. It needs to be approved by IEEE to be accepted and thereafter adopted in the industry.

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