If some people's perception of Wi-Fi in the past work, entertainment and life is not clear, then under the influence of the epidemic, everyone has paid more and more attention to the important role played by Wi-Fi in these scenarios. Like many technologies, Wi-Fi has been constantly evolving, adapting, and evolving over the past few years to meet new and unpredictable connectivity challenges. Now, Wi-Fi 7 is about to open a new chapter in connectivity. Qualcomm Technologies is not only committed to defining the ultimate speed and capacity of each new generation of Wi-Fi technology, but also significantly improving the low-latency performance of Wi-Fi technology by adding key enhancement features. Based on Wi-Fi 7's optimized combination of latency, speed, and capacity, it will be at the heart of cutting-edge application scenarios such as extended reality (XR), metaversity, social gaming, and edge computing.
Wi-Fi 7 is a novel and innovative solution that can meet the surge in demand for Wi-Fi in current and future use cases. Next, we will reveal the excellent connectivity of Wi-Fi 7.
Wi-Fi is an essential connectivity technology
Over the years, Wi-Fi has played an increasingly important role in life, economy and society. For consumers and businesses, Wi-Fi is a critical resource. Analyst firm IDC predicts that by the end of 2021, Wi-Fi 6 terminal shipments will exceed 2 billion units, accounting for more than 50% of all Wi-Fi terminal shipments, and this number will grow to 5.2 billion units by 2025. This explosive growth stems from a number of drivers, not least because Wi-Fi technology has continued to evolve in response to demand growth. For example, Wi-Fi 6 aims to improve Wi-Fi performance in high-density networks by introducing multi-user features, and Wi-Fi 6E extends these features to the new 6GHz band, allowing more and wider channels to handle the needs of higher speeds and lower latency. As a product innovation by Qualcomm Technologies, routers that support Mesh technology not only support full-home coverage, but also ensure high-speed connectivity when networking is required.
Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E are gaining popularity at record speeds, while continuing to be accompanied by the need to drive Wi-Fi performance across multiple dimensions.
Wi-Fi 7 brings a whole new level of performance
Spectrum is critical to wireless connectivity. Historically, the expansion of available spectrum has steadily driven innovation in Wi-Fi technology, from the traditional 2.4GHz band with only three (non-overlapping) narrow bandwidth channels to 5GHz bands with more spectrum and wide 160MHz channels. Currently, the allocation of new 6GHz bands in some regions (with up to 1200MHz spectrum in some regions) and increasing congestion in the 2.4GHz band (due to the continued increase in Bluetooth devices and new Thread-enabled IoT devices) are driving further changes to Wi-Fi.
Modern high-speed Wi-Fi terminals increasingly rely on the 5GHz and 6GHz high-frequency bands to achieve the desired performance. This situation not only guarantees speed and latency, but also frees up the 2.4GHz band for more suitable applications such as the Internet of Things and terminals running at the edge of Wi-Fi networks.
Managing and optimizing multiple available spectrum bands may be a hallmark differentiator of Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 7 introduces features that deliver extreme speed, high capacity, and low latency to support next-generation applications and services. Next, take a quick look back at these key features.
Multi-connection technology reduces latency in crowded environments
Currently, AP access points typically offer support for three channels, including a 2.4GHz low band, two 5GHz and 6GHz high bands, especially in Wi-Fi 7. Depending on the availability of frequency bands in different regions, support for high frequency bands may be that both channels are on the 5GHz band, or that there is one channel on each of the 5GHz and 6GHz bands. Wi-Fi 7's multi-connectivity feature provides clients with multiple options for using these channels, most efficiently by taking advantage of the larger capacity, higher peak speeds, and lower congestion in the high-frequency band. As shown in Figure 1, the terminal connection can be switched alternately between frequency bands. In this scheme, the terminal uses the first available frequency band for each transmission, and once the previous transmission is completed, any frequency band can be selected for the next transmission. In this way, the connection link congestion can be avoided and the delay can be reduced.
Figure 1 – Multiple connections alternate, with terminals switching between available frequency bands to reduce latency
The highest performance solution is the High Band Simultaneous Multi-Link as shown in Figure 2. When a frequency band is available, the terminal can work concurrently in real time on both bands and aggregate its throughput. Because it can work simultaneously on all frequency bands, it is easier to avoid congestion in order to achieve the effect of reducing latency.
Figure 2 – High-frequency band multi-connection concurrency, aggregating high-frequency bands to provide the highest throughput and lowest latency
Expand large channel bandwidth for each region
Wi-Fi 6E has greatly expanded the use of wide channel spectrum, allowing multiple 160MHz channels to be available in any region where 6GHz spectrum has been allocated. Wi-Fi 7 doubles the potential channel bandwidth to 320MHz, doubling the theoretical capacity and significantly increasing user data transfer speeds.
Currently, some regions can support three 320MHz continuous spectrum channels, some regions support one, and some regions do not support it at all. For the 5GHz band, there is no continuous 320MHz channel, so only the region that supports 6GHz can support this continuous mode. High-band multi-connection concurrency provides a wider effective channel by aggregating the two available channels. That is, by combining two 160MHz channels in the high-frequency band, a 320MHz effective channel is created. In China, the use of high-band multi-connection concurrency technology can achieve an efficient channel of 240MHz, even if the 6GHz spectrum is not allocated, the advantages of Wi-Fi 7's ultra-high throughput can also be taken advantage of.
Wider channels can be supported even in the presence of interference
In some scenarios, existing users will occupy a portion of the bandwidth in an idle continuous channel (such as 20MHz or 40MHz), in which case the AP access point is usually prevented from using the spectrum. In response, Wi-Fi 7 brings an innovative solution called "Preamble Puncturing", which enables AP access points to use the continuous channel without the interference described above (as shown in Figure 3). Although the amount of hole punching reduces the overall bandwidth, it is still possible to achieve a wider channel than other methods.
Figure 3 – Preamble Punch supports wider channels even in the presence of user interference
4K QAM high-order modulation technology and other performance enhancements
Wi-Fi 7 standardizes on 4K QAM, a higher-order modulation technology that is now supported in Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6 solutions. 4K QAM modulation technology increases speed for users who are closer to the AP access point and frees up valuable capacity for other users.
Wi-Fi 7 enables exciting new experiences and use cases
In addition to improving the performance of the applications people use today, Wi-Fi 7 will enable many new experiences. Take the cutting-edge Extended Reality (XR) application, for example, which is extremely sensitive to latency, and if low latency is not achieved, the terminal will be useless. Realistic and immersive XR experiences are backed by extremely high-definition video with extremely high refresh rates, which require very high internet speeds and bandwidth. At the same time, a large amount of network capacity is required to support a large number of users to experience these applications at the same time. In addition, emerging applications such as cloud gaming, social gaming, and metaversias will continue to test the limits of wireless technology. In this regard, WiFi 7 will offer us plenty of performance.
In enterprise networks, intelligence and value are shifting to the edge. Edge cloud is a key component of enterprise digital transformation, and Wi-Fi is the last link in many enterprise use cases, and even in dense, high-traffic situations, the low latency and high bandwidth that Wi-Fi 7 can provide can play a critical role in many business-critical applications. There is no doubt that Wi-Fi 7 will quickly become a prerequisite for supporting high-traffic use cases, such as offices, entertainment venues, and other scenarios.
Qualcomm standards and technical leadership
Qualcomm Technologies has been at the forefront of Wi-Fi evolution, pushing industry standards and technologies to meet growing customer, endpoint, application and service needs.
Qualcomm Technologies has a long history of developing groundbreaking technologies and assisting the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) or the Wi-Fi Consortium (WFA) to standardize them. In addition, Qualcomm plays a key role in almost every major phase of Wi-Fi evolution. For example, Qualcomm played an important role in introducing MIMO and MU-MIMO to 802.11n and 11ac, and also led the introduction of OFDMA to Wi-Fi 6 (then known as 11ax), and so on. Qualcomm is currently working closely with all IEEE and WFA members to improve Wi-Fi 7 technology.
Qualcomm Technologies' leadership is not limited to technology and standards development. By providing comprehensive technical features and more powerful and exclusive innovations on a large number of devices and networks every year, Qualcomm ensures that users can experience the benefits of extreme speed, large capacity, and continuous low latency network improvements across a wide geographical range.