What you’ll learn:
- What are the performance advances wrought by Wi-Fi 7?
- The technologies behind Wi-Fi 7.
- Some of the potential applications that can benefit from Wi-Fi 7.
We’re living in a wireless world. More devices are exchanging more data in more locations every day. The increase in demand is relentless—analysts at Zion Market Research expect the wireless connectivity market to reach $219.86 billion by 2030, for a compound annual growth rate of over 15%.
This surge is driven not just by the proliferation of devices, but by a new class of ultra-demanding applications like multi-user augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), immersive gaming, and the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), to name a few. They impose a whole new level of performance requirements that far exceed the abilities of existing Wi-Fi technologies. Supporting these applications as they go mainstream requires radically rethinking Wi-Fi technology. The result is Wi-Fi 7.
Compared to Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 delivers:
- Increased throughput speed
- A major boost in the number of simultaneous connections
- Ultra-low latency
- Reduced vulnerability to interference
- Lower cost
Wi-Fi 7 formally launched in January 2024, and Wi-Fi 7-certified products have already hit the market. Indeed, the Wi-Fi Alliance projects that 2024 will see the deployment of over 233 million Wi-Fi 7 devices.
Wi-Fi 7: A Look Under the Hood
Radio-frequency (RF) spectrum is a wireless network’s most valuable resource. For wireless devices to communicate independently over a wireless network, each needs to send or receive data over its own narrow slice of RF spectrum called a resource unit (RU). The greater the amount of spectrum covered by a network, the greater the number of RUs—and the greater the number of devices the network can support.
Initial generations of Wi-Fi operated over frequency bands around 2.4 GHz and 5.5 GHz. Think of them as parallel highways, with each highway carrying single-passenger sedans. To increase the ability to connect devices, Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 added another frequency band centered around 6.5 GHz. This is the equivalent of adding another parallel highway, immediately boosting the number of devices the network can support. This new "highway" has significantly more capacity than the previous two highways combined.
The primary frequency bands are divided into channels (or lanes in our highway analogy), each of which is further divided into RUs. In conventional Wi-Fi, a device monopolizes the entire channel for the duration of its session—no other device can use it. If you've ever been in a crowded arena or on a tradeshow floor and found yourself unable to connect to the network, it was probably because there weren’t enough links to support all of the devices in the area. This brings us to the first key upgrade of Wi-Fi 7.
Wi-Fi 7 Expands to 320-MHz channels
Although expanding Wi-Fi 6E to the 6-GHz RF band boosts capacity, that standard restricts channel width to 160 MHz. Wi-Fi 7 expands channel widths to 320 MHz, giving us twice the number of channels in the 6-GHz band. To return to our roadway analogy, we just effectively doubled the number of lanes, converting it to a superhighway with a massive increase in capacity. Wi-Fi 7 has other nuances that further enhance the ability of the network to maximize the efficient use of spectrum.
Multi-link operation (MLO)
Flexible use of spectrum is another significant advance of Wi-Fi 7. Previous generations of Wi-Fi restricted devices to using a single channel per session. If the channel couldn’t deliver the performance needed, there was no solution.
Wi-Fi 7’s MLO enables the network to connect devices simultaneously over different channels and even different frequency bands in the same session. The technology maximizes the performance and use of the network. It’s similar to the way that a vehicle can change lanes, switch highways, or even use frontage roads to avoid traffic.
MLO provides other important advantages. In previous versions of Wi-Fi, a device could either transmit or receive, but it couldn’t do both at the same time. MLO enables Wi-Fi devices to do both simultaneously.
The net result of MLO is a massive increase in throughput. MLO also equips Wi-Fi 7 with two support mesh networks. These dynamic and self-healing networks are effective for applications like automated warehousing, smart factories, and medical centers.
Higher-order modulation scheme
Modulation is the technology for encoding data on a wireless signal. Wi-Fi 7 uses 4096 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), which enables a Wi-Fi 7 device to pack more data into the same channel. Think of it as the difference between that single-passenger vehicle traveling down our data lane and the same vehicle packed with 12 people. 4096 QAM provides a 20% increase in data throughput compared to Wi-Fi 6E, which uses 1024 QAM.
Reduced latency—much lower than for Wi-Fi 6E
Latency is the delay introduced by the network during the transmission of data from the sending device to the receiving device. Because of advances like MLO and 4096 QAM, Wi-Fi 7 delivers significantly lower latency than its predecessors. This is particularly beneficial for applications like AR and VR, as well as immersive gaming, which aims to mimic human reaction time.
Multimedia priority service (MPS)
Wi-Fi 7 has some entirely new features, the most important of which is multimedia priority service (MPS). MPS enables a Wi-Fi network to define priority users and preferentially allocate resources to them.
An example would be prioritizing communications among first responders and emergency management personnel during a natural disaster or other catastrophic event. Today, first responders have the same priority in accessing the network as all other users. In an emergency, the network can become congested. MPS provides a way to ensure that priority users, such as first responders, will get access.
The Benefits and Applications of Wi-Fi 7
Some of the applications that will benefit from Wi-Fi 7 are already edging toward the mainstream, from streaming ultra-HD video to Wi-Fi networks serving the many devices in a smart home—including videoconferencing for remote work/e-learning. Some of the upgrades to Wi-Fi 7 focus on broader applications of these technologies, but most target performance-intensive applications that are poised to go mainstream. Here are just a few.
The Industrial Internet of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) makes headlines in areas like homes, offices, and retail, but market projections show that the industrial IoT (IIoT) will dwarf it. The modern industrial environment, from factories to utilities to logistics and transportation, increasingly depends on networked devices. Sensors and smart components stream data to enable predictive maintenance and analytics, while network equipment controllers support remote troubleshooting and operation.
Using Wi-Fi increases flexibility (think reconfigurable factory) with much lower capital expenditure than required for wired systems. In addition to high capacity and coverage, these applications need five nines of reliability, rock-solid security, and deterministic communications to ensure that all data and commands reach their destinations without any delay or interference.
Wi-Fi 7 is ideal to address these requirements, with a major boost in throughput, broad coverage, and the lowest possible latency.
Multi-user AR/VR
Supporting AR, VR, or some combination thereof (extended reality, or XR) is already performance-intensive. Synchronizing the delivery of data to multiple users from a single access point requires ultra-high throughput and connectivity while maintaining minimal latency and suppressing interference. The special features of Wi-Fi 7, including MLO and 4096 QAM, make the technology an excellent fit for this emerging application.
Immersive gaming and entertainment
AR and VR are moving gaming and entertainment to the next level by providing a rich, immersive experience—but only if played on a network configured to support them. Today’s challenges range from cloud-based gaming to multiplayer online games to massive multiplayer events. Networks need to provide equally massive throughput to display the vivid details of the games and broad coverage to connect not just players, but also audience members and broadcast equipment.
Crucially, these applications require minimum latency to translate player movements to the field of play. Wi-Fi 7’s higher throughput, 320-MHz channel widths, and 1-ms latencies keep up with the speed of play.
Wireless communications in medical centers
Major medical centers today are super users of wireless communications. It starts with medical telemetry, which sends a stream of critical data. Staffers use laptops and tablets to view patient records and test results or review images. And don’t forget patients and their families, who have their phones, tablets, and laptops close at hand.
Peak usage is unpredictable, and the network is constantly being reconfigured. Reliability is paramount—lives literally depend on network access—and security runs a close second.
These demands play to the strengths of Wi-Fi 7. It’s designed for efficient spectrum usage, and MPS makes it possible to prioritize staff access and data over all other users on the network to ensure optimal patient care.
The Challenges of Wi-Fi 7
Much has been written about the performance enhancements of Wi-Fi 7, but they don’t come without their design challenges, from the board level and up. Some of those include thermal management to minimize the heat generated by the electronics (see figure).
4096 QAM provides a significant throughput boost, but it’s far more difficult to execute than 1024 QAM, requiring special high-performance power amplifiers. The use of 320-MHz channels makes this even more difficult, and all of the above once again generates more heat. In addition, specialized bulk-acoustic-wave (BAW) filters are required to reduce interference between frequency bands used in MLO. The industry has risen to the occasion, as it always does, but product quality matters.
Wi-Fi 7 Can Meet the Demands of Emerging Apps
When the iPhone was released in 2007, nobody anticipated the emergence of the multibillion-dollar app economy. Wi-Fi 7 targets the needs of various emerging applications, but its capabilities—higher throughput, vastly expanded capacity, spectral efficiency, security, reliability, and rock-bottom latency—will open the way for many more.
Delivering this type of technology advance takes an ecosystem. Skyworks is proud to play its part as Wi-Fi 7 hits the mainstream and as Wi-Fi 8 (yes, already in development) reaches the point of product development.
