Three years after Wi-Fi 6 came out, Wi-Fi 7 arrived.
Author | Yao Yongzhe
Edit | Bao Yonggang
In February 2022, Qualcomm unveiled the world's first Wi-Fi 7 commercial solution at the MWC conference, and when it was released, it was only three years after the first mobile phones that supported the Wi-Fi 6 standard were launched. Over the past three years, Wi-Fi 6 has been rapidly gaining popularity across the globe.
The popularity of Wi-Fi 6 makes people look forward to what kind of surprises Wi-Fi 7 can bring as a new generation.
Just three years later, Wi-Fi 7 has taken its power to the next level
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Wi-Fi has been in existence for 25 years. After 25 years of development, Wi-Fi has become an indispensable part of our lives. According to IDC, global Wi-Fi chip shipments will reach 4.9 billion units in 2022.
The arrival of Wi-Fi 6 three years ago caused a "Wi-Fi whirlwind". After its introduction, Wi-Fi 6 quickly became popular. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, by the end of 2021, Wi-Fi 6 terminal shipments have exceeded 2 billion units. At the same time, it is expected that the shipment volume of Wi-Fi 6 terminals will account for 56% in 2022, and the shipment volume of Wi-Fi 6 terminals will reach 13 billion units in 2026.
Wi-Fi 6 is still under siege, and Wi-Fi 7 as a successor has arrived. The speed of Wi-Fi is truly amazing.
Behind the rapid arrival of Wi-Fi 7, the strength should not be underestimated.
Early Wi-Fi had only 80 MHz of usable spectrum, only one radio frequency for the wireless channel, and the maximum system wireless capacity was 54Mbps and the effective bandwidth was 20 MHz. In the Wi-Fi 6 era, the available spectrum increased to 560MHz, including two frequency bands of 2.4GHz and 5GHz, and the effective bandwidth also reached 160MHz. In the upcoming Era of Wi-Fi 7, the available spectrum will increase to 1760MHz, more than 3 times that of Wi-Fi 6, and the effective bandwidth will reach 320MHz, which is twice that of Wi-Fi 6.
Bandwidth growth often represents an increase in performance, which increases as the effective bandwidth and available spectrum expand. Compared with the previous generation of technology, Wi-Fi 7 has high throughput, can support multi-user simultaneous connection, has lower latency, and can more accurately and timely deliver information in scenarios such as remote conferences. It also has higher deterministic performance, which can reduce mutual interference between products.
Although it is less than three years away from the landing of the previous generation of technology, the experience brought by Wi-Fi 7 to users can be said to be a comprehensive upgrade.
Wi-Fi 7 practices "unique skills"
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As a new generation of Wi-Fi 7, it has also practiced a number of "unique skills".
Nick Kucharewski, senior vice president and general manager of wireless infrastructure and networking at Qualcomm Technologies, mentioned that due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are now more Wi-Fi-related use cases. Nike cites his own home as an example: "In my home, for example, I need to work from home, my kids need to take online classes at home, my wife sometimes needs to consult or hold meetings online at home, all of these activities are carried out simultaneously in a family environment, and I believe that different parts of the world are experiencing similar situations." Such new changes also put new demands on Wi-Fi. ”
The advent of Wi-Fi 7 can meet these new needs.
The first is faster connectivity, thanks to Wi-Fi 7's wider channel and Qualcomm's 4K QAM modulation technology, Wi-Fi has been able to achieve faster speeds and lower latency transmission.
Then there's the multi-connection technology. In the early days of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi had only one channel of 2.4GHz to make a single connection between the user and the router. Then with the advancement of technology, 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual-channel Wi-Fi appeared, and users can establish a connection with the router through one of the channels.
Wi-Fi 7 brings a tri-band connection. In areas where 6GHz channels are supported, users will be able to connect to routers using 6GHz channels. In addition, although the previous generation of technology supports signals of two frequencies, it can only be switched between two frequencies. Wi-Fi 7 is able to connect using two links at the same time, which can bring more stable signals and less interference to Wi-Fi. Even in areas where 6GHz channels are not supported, it is possible to combine 160MHz and 80MHz in the 5G band to form a bandwidth of 240MHz.
Multi-connection technology allows users to connect two different channels with the same device to complete different work independently of each other to avoid interference, and can also make the mobile phone and the router side establish connections at the same time in the 5GHz and 6GHz high-speed frequency bands through aggregation, and use them superimposed to improve throughput.
Finally, there is adaptive connection technology. This technology enables Wi-Fi to maximize the use of channel bandwidth when there is interference through "adaptive interference punching". Although the bandwidth we expect is complete, it is inevitable that there will be interference in practice. Adaptive connection technology will "punch" the interference through the "hole" in the channel when it receives the interference effect, so that the impact of the interference is minimized.
The future of Wi-Fi 7 is not far away.
On May 5, 2022, Qualcomm unveiled its Wi-Fi 7-based professional networking platform, which covers a full product line from low-end to high-end, including four products:
Qualcomm 1620 professional networking platform: supports four-band 16-channel data stream connection, peak wireless capacity of 33.1Gbps, for sports venues, large enterprises and top home mesh network system.
Qualcomm 1220 professional networking platform: supports tri-band 12-channel data stream connection, peak wireless capacity of 21.6Gbps, for enterprise-level, small and medium-sized enterprises, production and consumers and top-level home mesh network systems.
Qualcomm 820 professional networking platform: Supports four-band 8-channel data stream connection, peak wireless capacity of 13.7Gbps, for enterprise-level, small and medium-sized enterprises, production and consumers and top-level home mesh network system.
Qualcomm 620 professional networking platform: Supports tri-band 6-channel data stream connection, peak wireless capacity of 10.8Gbps, for enterprise-level, small and medium-sized enterprises, gaming applications and home mesh networking systems.
This marks a big step forward in Promoting the landing of Wi-Fi 7 since Qualcomm released its first Wi-Fi 7 commercial solution in February. It also shows that the future of Wi-Fi 7 that we are looking forward to is already within reach.