IT House February 15 news, today, Qualcomm officially issued a document on Wi-Fi 7 technology introduced. Qualcomm said that Wi-Fi 7 is about to open a new chapter in the field of connectivity, Qualcomm will be based on the optimized combination of Wi-Fi 7 in terms of latency, speed and capacity, which will become the core of the most cutting-edge application scenarios such as extended reality (XR), metaversics, social games and edge computing.
Qualcomm's interpretation of Wi-Fi 7:
Qualcomm said AP access points typically provide support for three channels, including a low band of 2.4GHz and two 5GHz and 6GHz 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-connection nature provides clients with multiple options for using these channels, most effectively 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.
Wi-Fi 6E greatly expands the use of wide-channel spectrum, allowing multiple 160MHz channels to be used in any area 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. This is to create a 320MHz effective channel by combining two 160MHz channels in the high-frequency band. In China, the use of high-band multi-connection concurrency technology enables an efficient channel of 240MHz, even if 6GHz spectrum is not allocated, the ultra-high throughput of Wi-Fi 7 can also be taken advantage of.
In some scenarios, existing users consume a portion of the bandwidth in an idle continuous channel, such as 20MHz or 40MHz, in which case the AP access point is typically 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.
Wi-Fi 7 standardizes on 4K QAM, a higher-order modulation technology that is currently supported in Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6 solutions. 4K QAM modulation technology increases speed and allows valuable capacity for other users who are closer to the AP access point.
In addition to improving the performance of the apps 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, immersive XR experiences are backed by extremely high-definition video 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. WiFi 7 will give us plenty of performance for this.
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, 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.
IT House has reported that the world's leading consulting organization Dell'Oro Group reported that Wi-Fi 7 products will be available as early as 2023.