Technological development does not rest and already appears on the horizon Wi-Fi 7, the next generation of the industry’s leading wireless standard. Although the final specifications of the standard have not yet been approved, the large providers are already working on it and the first news is coming to us from MediaTek.
2022 has to be the year of the deployment of Wi-Fi 6 and its improved variant Wi-Fi 6E. But work on new versions continues. In the same way that other industry groups develop new versions of the big standards, as we saw last week with the release of the final PCIe 6.0 specifications, the Wi-Fi Alliance has a program underway to define the final specifications of Wi-Fi 7.
MediaTek says that it has been involved in this development from the first moment of its announcement and that it will be among the first to launch products to the market with its support. It has now announced thefirst live demo of Wi-Fi 7 technology«. The presentation has been internal for clients and key collaborators of the company, but good results and a launch not far away are advancing: 2023.
The vice president of the semiconductor group explains its importance: «Faster broadband internet access and more demanding applications like higher resolution video streaming and virtual reality gaming are driving demand for Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E and soon Wi-Fi 7«.
What will Wi-Fi 7 be like
Defined as 802.11be, it points to two key benefits that have been repeated with each new version of the standard: faster speeds and reduced network congestion. According to Wi-Fi Alliance, Wi-Fi 7 will support a performance of 30Gbps or more, which is a big step up from the maximum speeds of 9.6 Gbps available with Wi-Fi 6.
Other improvements are expected to include support for 320 MHz channels, 4K quadrature amplitude modulation (4K-QAM) support, and reduced latency and jitter. The former measures how long it takes for data to travel between endpoints, while the latter measures the amount of inconsistent latency times across a network.
Another improvement will come from multi-link operation (MLO) technology. This feature aggregates multiple channels in different frequency bands at the same time to improve network traffic even if there is interference or congestion in the bands. MLO technology will be critical to delivering streaming video or gaming that requires consistent, sustained, real-time performance.
Wi-Fi 7 technology, says MediaTek, «It will be the backbone of next-generation home, office, and industrial networks, providing connectivity for everything from multiplayer AR/VR applications to cloud gaming, 4K calling, and 8K streaming.«.
Products with Wi-Fi 7 are expected to hit the market from 2023. And it promises a lot. We will see how far, but we can already advance, which will be the first wireless connection standard that truly allows us to do without wired networks obtaining all its performance.
