Internet of Things think tank collation and release
Guide
Today, Qualcomm announced the world's most scalable portfolio of commercial Wi-Fi 7 network platforms, including Qualcomm 1620, 1220, 820 and 620 professional networking platforms.
At MWC Mobile World Congress 2022 in February this year, Qualcomm unveiled the world's first and fastest Wi-Fi 7 commercial solution, the FastConnect 7800, a mobile connectivity system supported by full Wi-Fi 7 features and the ability to simultaneously utilize two Wi-Fi radios to enable high-frequency connectivity of four data streams in the 5GHz and/or 6GHz bands.
In the early hours of this morning, Qualcomm officially released the commercial Wi-Fi 7 professional network solution, which is also the third generation of qualcomm Networking Pro series of professional networking platforms. According to Qualcomm itself, its third-generation professional networking platform is currently the world's highest-performing commercial Wi-Fi 7 network infrastructure platform, and has now been sampled to global development partners.
Qualcomm's new platform marks the 10Gbps+ era
For the next generation of Wi-Fi infrastructure, Qualcomm has been offering two innovative product combinations: an immersive home networking platform (home application) and a professional networking platform (enterprise-class application).
For professional networking platforms, this is Qualcomm's highest-performance wireless networking product line, covering enterprise-level wireless AP, home mesh, carrier gateway, game router, 5G FAW gateway and other application scenarios, while having strong network acceleration capabilities and lower CPU occupancy. At present, Qualcomm has maintained a frequency of updates every two years or so in terms of professional networking platforms.
In August 2018, Qualcomm released the first generation of Networking Pro professional networking platform, including four sub-series of 400, 600, 800, and 1200, supporting Wi-Fi 6, supporting up to 8 spatial data streams, peak speed of 4.1Gbps, and connecting up to 1500 users/devices concurrently.
In May 2020, Qualcomm launched the second generation of Networking Pro professional networking platform, including four sub-series of 610, 810, 1210 and 1610, supporting Wi-Fi 6E, the world's first support for 16 Wi-Fi 6/Wi-Fi 6E data streams (4+8+4), and the industry's first support for up to 2000 concurrent users/devices.
The third generation of Networking Pro x20 professional networking platform launched this time has also brought four upgraded products according to the convention, which will be launched in the second half of this year:
620: Supports tri-band 6-channel data stream connection (2+2+2) with a peak wireless capacity of 10.8Gbps for enterprise-class, small and medium-sized enterprises, gaming applications, and home mesh networking systems.
820: Supports four-band 8-channel data stream connection (2+2+2+2) with a peak wireless capacity of 13.7Gbps, and is aimed at enterprise-level, small and medium-sized enterprises, production and consumers, and top-level home mesh network systems.
1220: Supports tri-band 12-channel data stream connection (4+4+4) with a peak wireless capacity of 21.6Gbps, and is aimed at enterprise-level, small and medium-sized enterprises, production and consumers, and top-level home mesh network systems.
1620: Supports quad-band 16-channel data stream connection (4+4+4+4) with a peak wireless capacity of 33.1Gbps for stadiums, large enterprises, and top-level home mesh network systems.
For the professional networking platform Networking Pro x20 series, it itself has extremely high throughput, excellent deterministic latency, but more exaggerated, the maximum physical layer (PHY) rate of the system is as high as 33Gbps, the wireless physical layer rate of a single channel is increased to 11.5Gbps, and the user capacity of a single channel is more than 500.
In addition, the new platform can also be used with Qualcomm's existing Wi-Fi 7 client systems such as the FastConnect 7800, and can take advantage of the high-performance 5GHz/6GHz band to achieve optimal throughput and multi-connection latency through support for high-frequency multi-connection concurrency. At the same time, the platform can also combine high-performance network access methods such as 5G fixed wireless access and 10G-PON optical fiber, and future-oriented high-definition video conferencing, AR and VR, and high-performance cloud games, so that users can feel an immersive network experience.
Over the years, Qualcomm Professional Networking Platform has obtained nearly 300 customer product designs, including Cisco, New H3C, Netmael, TP-Link, Linksys, Xiaomi and other major brands.
Redefining high performance, Wi-Fi 7 is more than just speed
In multiple scenarios that take up a lot of a user's time, it is more common to use a smart device to connect to WiFi than to use traffic.
According to the data, by the end of 2021, Wi-Fi 6 terminal shipments have reached 2 billion, and it is expected that by 2026, Wi-Fi 6/6E terminal shipments will reach 13 billion, accounting for more than 90% of smartphones.
Compared with Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7 not only improves transmission speeds, but also brings many new features, including: wider channels, more efficient QAM modulation, multi-connection adaptive connectivity and so on. Previous article in the IoT Think Tank "Pushing the Limits of Wi-Fi Performance!" Qualcomm Reveals How Wi-Fi 7 Does It", qualcomm has detailed the technical advantages of Wi-Fi 7 given by Qualcomm officials, and the main key features are as follows:
High speed and high bandwidth
In Wi-Fi 7, the three frequency bands of 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, and 6Ghz will be able to work at the same time, and the width of a single channel will be expanded from 160MHz of Wi-Fi 6 to 320MHz, which is equivalent to turning a single lane on the road into a dual lane, and the traffic speed and congestion will be improved, in this case, the peak transmission rate of Wi-Fi 7 will exceed 40Gbps, which is 4 times higher than that of Wi-Fi 6E.
Multilink
Today's access points (APs) usually provide support for three frequency bands, but before Wi-Fi 7, users can only choose the most suitable one band, but with multi-link, users can connect multiple channels at the same time, dynamically aggregate user traffic in a highly congested network environment, and support automatic switching between multiple channels. For example, if the 2.4Ghz band is already too congested, the device can use the 5Ghz channel at the same time without cutting off the connection to the 2.4Ghz band, resulting in lower latency. When used with the likes of qualcomm FastConnect 7800, the third-generation Qualcomm Professional Networking Platform leverages the high-performance 5GHz and 6GHz bands to achieve optimal throughput and multi-connection latency through support for high-frequency multi-connection concurrency.
4096 QAM
In Wi-Fi 6, the highest level modulation already supported is 1024-QAM, while Wi-Fi 7 supports a more advanced modulation scheme of 4k QAM, and higher precision QAM is similar to the increase in screen pixel density, upgrading from 1080P to 4K, compared to Wi-Fi 6 using 1k QAM modulation, which can increase throughput and data capacity by about 20% by increasing the peak rate.
In addition to the technical advantages of Wi-Fi 7 itself, relying on the iterative development of multi-generation Qualcomm professional networking platform, the third-generation platform combines Wi-Fi 7 features with Qualcomm's intelligent multi-channel management technology, which not only brings speed improvement, delay reduction and network utilization improvement for Wi-Fi 6/6E end users, but also brings ultra-high throughput and lower latency to the next generation of Wi-Fi 7 terminal equipment.
In addition, Qualcomm also said that its third-generation professional networking platform can bring application performance that is almost comparable to the private domain spectrum thanks to advanced features such as interference detection and multi-connection operation.
Wi-Fi 7 is wonderful, but it is not yet known when it will be available
In order to maximize the use of the 6GHz frequency band at long distances, outdoors and other conditions, Qualcomm has also launched a one-stop solution for hardware and software, "Automated Frequency Control", which can be integrated into user devices based on Qualcomm professional networking platform and Qualcomm immersive home networking platform.
However, this solution needs to be commercialized after passing formal regulatory approval, this is because Wi-Fi 7's commercial prospects in China are still covered with a "dark cloud", its performance is doubled, behind the need for a very core resource support - radio spectrum, if the future spectrum policy is unfavorable, Wi-Fi 7 commercial will also encounter a "card neck".
Previously, WiFi had been deployed in the 2.4GH and 5GHz bands. However, with the rapid development of the WiFi industry, the demand for radio spectrum resources is very urgent.
At present, countries show different attitudes towards the 6GHz (5925-7125MHz) band, which directly determines the fate of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7. These policies mainly focus on whether to allow WiFi access as an unauthorized frequency band, including three scenarios:
(1) 6GHz is fully (5925-7125 MHz) available for WiFi use as an unlicensed frequency band
(2) The part of 6GHz (5925-6425MHz) is available for WiFi as an unlicensed frequency band
(3) 6GHz all (5925-7125 MHz) as a licensed frequency band to cellular networks and other authorized access
For WiFi players, the first scheme is the most ideal, using a 1200MHz continuous frequency; the second scheme can use a 500MHz continuous frequency, which can basically meet the needs of the current planning; the third scheme is the least desirable, which means that the plan to extend Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 to 6GHz cannot be realized, and the possibility of commercial use is very small.
The mainland has not yet given a clear policy on 6GHz, but from public information, it seems that it is more inclined to use the band as a licensed frequency band for 5G and 6G mobile communications. At present, the global leading edge of 5G development in the mainland has been established, and the mainland radio management department has also been committed to seeking more IMT frequency resources for 5G and future 6G technology from the perspective of efficient frequency use and long-term planning.
Write at the end
In Qualcomm's fiscal second quarter of fiscal 2022 released in April, its $11.2 billion revenue was credited to the Wi-Fi business, and the Internet of Things segment also had a 61% growth. With the commercialization of Wi-Fi 7, Qualcomm's Wi-Fi business will undoubtedly have a positive impact on its revenue this year.
And not only Qualcomm, MediaTek, HiSilicon and other manufacturers are also actively laying out next-generation wireless networks such as Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 7 will be built on the IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) standard and the official version of the design is expected to be confirmed from November 2023 to May 2024.
In the future, Wi-Fi will play an increasingly important role in our lives, and will be an important resource for consumers and businesses, but what the future of Wi-Fi 7 is, we can only wait for the landing of spectrum policy boots.
Resources:
1. Qualcomm's first commercial Wi-Fi 7 professional networking solution, tasting and playing
2. "3.3 Trillion New Era! Qualcomm's world's first Wi-Fi 7 professional platform: single channel 500+ users, fast technology
3. Qualcomm Debuts the World's Most Scalable Commercial Wi-Fi 7 Professional Networking Solution, C114