While recently many people upgraded to Wi-Fi 6. The Wi-Fi 6E is barely just arrived yet but now the industry is gearing up to introduce the next generation of wireless networking technology — Wi-Fi 7. In this article you’ll get to know, What is WiFi 7? What are the significant improvements in Wi-Fi 7 over its previous generations? How Fast it will be? And everything you need to know.
Many people are still new to Wi-Fi 6 and might not yet get upgraded to Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. What actually people want from any new generation of Wi-Fi is better speed, reliability, and better range. The 7th generation of Wi-Fi promises to cover all these aspects.
What is Wi-Fi 7?
Wi-Fi 7 is a new Generation / Specification of Wi-Fi technology that is currently in use. Technically it is IEEE 802.11be, whereas its previous generation’s Wi-Fi 6 is IEEE 802.11ax and Wi-Fi 5 is IEEE 802.11ac in the old naming convention.
Wi-Fi promises next-level improvements over its previous generations Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. The speed of the Wi-Fi 7 will be 4 times faster than Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. It focuses on low latency, enhancing speed and capacity.
Why do we need Wi-Fi 7?
In recent years with the advancements in WLAN technologies and emerging applications, homes and enterprises have mainly relied on Wi-Fi. The new Emerging Technologies have higher requirements on latency rate and network speed.
For Example, attending online conferences, Watching 4K and 8K videos — requires a transmission rate of up to 20 Gbps and cloud-based gaming. To provide a good user experience the current Wi-Fi 6 is insufficient for this.
In Order to full fill, all these requirements IEEE announces to release of the 7th generation of Wi-Fi — Wi-Fi 7.
Wi-Fi 7 vs. Wi-Fi 6
Wi-Fi 7 brings show-stopping features and advances over its previous standards Wi-Fi 6. Look at the chart below which briefly distinguishes Wi-Fi 7 from Wi-Fi 6.
What are the Features of Wi-Fi 7?
Compared to Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7 will be four-time faster, have low latency, and support more connections. aside from this, the Wi-Fi Alliance plans to add some notable improvements in the 7th generation of Wi-Fi compared to the previous ones.
Companies like Qualcomm who are making Wi-Fi 7 chipsets are promising that the new standard will obsolete wired Ethernet cables. Below are some of the notable features of the Wi-Fi 7.
Higher-Order QAM
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) is basically a way of sending or receiving data in radio-frequency waves. The higher the QAM the more data you can send or receive.
The QAM supported by Wi-Fi 6 is 1024-QAM, which can carry modulation symbols up to 10 bits. In order to improve the QAM, Wi-Fi 7 introduces 4K (4096) QAM. It can carry modulation symbols up to 12 bits. The Wi-Fi 7 has a 20% increase rate with 4K QAM as compared to the 1024 QAM of Wi-Fi 6.
Wider Channel Bandwidths
The Wider the channel Bandwidth the more data it can transmit. Wi-Fi 6E has 160 MHz, a transfer speed of up to 1.2 Gbps. Wi-Fi 7 has introduced a channel bandwidth twice of Wi-Fi 6E which is 320 MHz and has a transfer speed of 2.4 Gbps.
While running highly emerging applications on the current Wi-Fi network you may encounter Low quality of service (QoS). You can understand Wider channel Bandwidth by an example of Traffic handled by a single-lane road compared to a three-lane or six-lane highway.
Multi-Link Operation
The most exciting feature of Wi-Fi 7 is Multi-Link Operation (MLO). MLO combines multiple channels on different frequencies to deliver better performance. Basically, it will allow 5GHz and 6GHz frequencies to combine together and work as a single connection.
Wi-Fi will also improve other existing technologies like MU-MIMO — (Multi-user – Multiple-input, Multiple-outputs) allowing to connection of multiple devices simultaneously to send and receive data. OFDMA — (Orthogonal Frequency – Division Multiple Access) allows a single transmission to deliver data at once to multiple devices and TWT.
It will really enhance the speed but we need devices to support this feature.
When Wi-Fi 7 will be available?
Wi-Fi 7 is still under development. According to Qualcomm and MediaTek, the Wi-Fi 7 products may likely be available in the market in 2023. The Wi-Fi 7 standard is beginning to take shape.
In May 2022, Qualcomm Unveiled Wi-Fi 7 four chipsets 1620, 1220, 820, and 620 under its networking proband. It may be likely used in home and enterprise routers as well as mesh router systems.
To take advantage of all the features of the New standard of Wi-Fi you’ll need to upgrade your devices. This means you’ve to buy new routers, phones, laptops, TVs, and other supportive devices.
With the arrival of Wi-Fi 7, it will be not obsolete to the previous standards of Wi-Fi systems. They will likely co-exist as compatible for many years.
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