Wi-Fi 7 is Coming…

Wi-Fi 7 is Coming…
​

The Wi-Fi Alliance is a global group of companies that are allied in developing, promoting, and standardizing Wi-Fi to create a common ground that allows consumers to have to pay little attention to device compatibility.  Sponsoring members are the biggest CE companies (Apple, Microsoft (MSFT), Samsung (005930.KS), Qualcomm (QCOM), etc.) and contributing members number in the hundreds, with over 50,000 products having the Wi-Fi Alliance certification.

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers) is the organization that produces the technical standards that Wi-Fi is based on, while the Wi-Fi Alliance assures device compatibility, but the standards are always evolving, going back to 802.11a which was released in 1999 to the current 802.11ax standard, also known as Wi-Fi 6E, which was officially adopted last year.  With each new standard, the data stream rate has increased, from 6Mbs/54Mbs for 802.11a to 600Mbs/9600Mbs for the current 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6E) standard and a number of other connection factors have also improved, particularly the ability to carry a higher number of streams in a given area, such as might take place in an office environment.  This prevents slow data rates and/or dropped connections, but with each new standard, the modems used, be it in a smartphone, laptop, or other device, must be upgraded to take advantage of the improvements.
Wi-Fi 7 will be the next iteration, and increasing requirements for data rates for streaming 4K or even 8K video, and the necessity for low latency required by AR/VR applications, will push the standard past the point where another ‘flavor’ of Wi-Fi 6 will suffice.  The new standard is expected around mid-year 2022 with full implementation in 2023, with a number of new features that will help to make Wi-Fi able to function under such more demanding scenarios. 

• Bandwidth will increase from the current 9.6Gbs to 30 Gbs and will utilize the 6 Ghz band to avoid latency issues.
• Wi-Fi 7 will allow data frames to be scheduled between different users, which is currently not allowed in Wi-Fi 6.  This means that rather than force all size data chunks to be scheduled with each user, data can be mixed to better fill the bandwidth, and then sorted back to individual users, increasing efficiency.
• Wi-Fi 7 will have a higher bit rate.  In the current Wi-Fi iteration, each signal carries 10 bits, Wi-Fi 7 will allow for 12 bits, a 20% increase.
• Wi-Fi 7 will allow the number of data streams to increase from 8 to 16.  While this means Wi-Fi 7 will have twice the number of data streams application processors will also need to be able to balance data loads and allocate resources to avoid interference.  Such protocols will also be included in Wi-Fi 7.

While the usual confusion will ensue when Wi-Fi 7 becomes a reality (“Is my current laptop able to use Wi-Fi 7?”), the standard will vastly improve the ability of local Wi-Fi systems, albeit after they are upgraded or replaced.  This will allow some of the more demanding bandwidth applications sufficient capacity to operate with the ‘loading’ or ‘buffering’ issues that plague many streaming or similar services, and will allow more realistic implementations of AR/VR when we delve into the soon-to-be invented Metaverse.  It would be sad if your personal Metaverse limited you to slow gaming or travel from one virtual location to another.  Wi-Fi 7 should help to keep you seamlessly able to remain on your couch for hours at a time, achieving the ultimate in instant gratification.