What is Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi 7 Vs Wi-Fi 6 Comparison

Keeping up with the pace of technological advancement in this circle is becoming increasingly difficult. Even though Wi-Fi 6 devices have not yet become widely prevalent, the 7th-generation Wi-Fi technology has already been developed. Now let's see what WiFi 7 has to offer and compare WiFi 6 and WiFi 7.

Table of Content

• What About Wi-Fi 7
• Need of Wi-Fi 7
• WiFi 6 vs WiFi 7
• Wi-Fi 7: New Features
• Applications of Wi-Fi 7

What About Wi-Fi 7:

IEEE 802.11be - exceptionally high throughput (EHT) is Wi-Fi 7 (Wi-Fi 7) - the next-generation Wi-Fi standard to be launched. With Wi-Fi 7, you have 320 MHz bandwidth, 4096-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), multiple-resource units (RUs), multi-link operations (MLOs), and multiple access points (APs) coordinated on the same network.

Due to these advances, Wi-Fi 7 enables faster data transmission rates and lower latency than its predecessor, Wi-Fi 6. With Wi-Fi 7, you'll be able to access throughput of up to 30 Gbps, which is roughly three times greater than Wi-Fi 6.

Need of Wi-Fi 7:

More and more homes and businesses are relying on Wi-Fi for network access thanks to the development of WLAN technologies. The requirements for throughput and latency have increased in recent years for emerging applications. There are many examples of these types of applications, including video transmission rates of up to 20 Gbps, VR/AR, gaming (requiring no more than 5 ms of latency), remote offices, video conferencing, and cloud computing.

Although Wi-Fi 6 tries to improve user experience in high-density scenarios, it does not meet these high requirements despite its advancements in high-density scenarios. Therefore, Wi-Fi 7 will be introduced by the IEEE as part of IEEE 802.11be EHT, known as IEEE 802.11be.

WiFi 6 vs WiFi 7 –

Wi-Fi 7: New Features

According to Wi-Fi 7, wireless throughput is expected to increase to 30 Gbps while a low-latency access guarantee is offered standard modifications are made both to the physical layer (PHY) and the MAC layer to achieve this result. The following technical innovations are unique to Wi-Fi 7 compared with Wi-Fi 6:

Bandwidth up to 320 MHz: The 2.4 GHz spectrum and the 5 GHz spectrum are unlicensed bands that are already congested and limited. Current Wi-Fi networks experience low quality of service (QoS) when using emerging applications (such as VR/AR). The Wi-Fi 7 WiFi standard supports 6 GHz and extends new bandwidth modes, including contiguous 240 MHz, non-contiguous 160+80 MHz, contiguous 320 MHz, and non-contiguous 160+160 MHz.

Multiple-RU: Wi-Fi 6 allows users to transmit and receive frames only on the RUs assigned to them, greatly limiting the ability to schedule spectrum resources. The Wi-Fi 7 specification defines a mechanism for assigning multiple RUs to a single user in order to solve this problem and further improve spectrum utilization. The standard specifications impose certain restrictions on RU combinations in order to balance implementation complexity with spectrum utilization. Therefore, RUs that contain fewer than 242 tones are only compatible with small RUs, and RUs that contain greater than or equal to 242 tones are only compatible with large RUs. It is possible to combine small and large RUs.

4096-QAM Higher Order: 1024-QAM is the highest-order modulation option supported by Wi-Fi 6, enabling each modulation symbol to carry a maximum of 10 bits. To increase performance, even more, Wi-Fi 7 uses 4096-QAM, which enables each modulation symbol to carry 12 bits. Wi-Fi 7 can achieve a 20% increase in rates with 4096-QAM compared to Wi-Fi 6 with 1024-QAM.

Multilink Technology: On the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz frequency bands, new spectrum management, coordination, and transmission mechanisms are essential for the efficient utilization of all available spectrum resources. The TGBE specification defines multi-link aggregation techniques, including the MAC architectures of enhanced multi-link aggregation, multi-link channel access, and multi-link transmission.

Streams of data and enhanced MIMO: The theoretical physical transmission rate of Wi-Fi 7 is more than twice as fast as that of Wi-Fi 6, as it adds 16 spatial streams to its eight. Distributed MIMO is supported by Wi-Fi 7 due to the addition of more data streams. Thus, multiple access points can provide 16 simultaneous data streams. Multiple APs must coordinate with each other to provide 16 simultaneous data streams.

Coordination between multiple APs: A lack of coordination between access points is a problem in the current 802.11 protocol framework. The features of most WLANs, such as automatic radio balancing and smart roaming, are vendor-defined. By coordinating across multiple access points, you can optimize channel selection and adjust load balance between APs in order to maximize radio resource utilization and balance. Multiple APs scheduling must be coordinated in order for Wi-Fi 7 to work properly, such as through time-frequency coordination, interference coordination, and distributed MIMO. It greatly improves air interface resources utilization by reducing interference between APs.

Coordination between multiple access points can be implemented in many ways. Among them are coordinated orthogonal frequency division multiple access (C-OFDMA), coordinated spatial reuse (CSR), coordinated beamforming (CBF), and joint transmission (JXT).

Applications of Wi-Fi 7:

As a result of the new features introduced in WiFi 7, data transmission rate and latency will both be significantly improved. Among the future applications that will benefit from these improvements are:

• Streaming video
• for video/voice conferences
• as well as online gaming
• with real-time collaboration
• through cloud computing and edge computing
• in the industrial internet of things
• immersive augmented reality/virtual reality
• Telemedicine that is interactive