The residual heat of Wi-Fi6 has not dissipated, and Wi-Fi7 has become a new hot topic that has been discussed a lot in the industry recently. More and more manufacturers have entered the game, and the commercialization of Wi-Fi 7 seems to be coming soon. Recently, Qualcomm released the Wi-Fi7 networking solution, and said that the Wi-Fi7 chip has been shipped to customers, and the terminal products are expected to be launched before the end of this year. It is expected that the Wi-Fi7 penetration rate will reach 10% from 2023 to 2024.
After the emergence of 5G and gigabit optical broadband, the applications of online video conferencing, remote office, cloud computing, ultra-high-definition (3D) video, augmented reality, and virtual reality have also quietly approached our lives, and also meet the needs of the Internet of Vehicles, Smart home, industrial control, environmental monitoring, mobile medical and other IoT application requirements. Compared with 5G mobile communication technology, Wi-Fi6 wireless network technology has also accelerated its sinking into industrial IoT applications.
With the rapid development of WLAN technology, families and enterprises are increasingly relying on Wi-Fi as an important means of accessing the network. A few days ago, the Wi-Fi Alliance created a wireless local area network technology based on the IEEE 802.11 standard, namely Wi-Fi6, and allows it to communicate with up to 8 devices at a maximum rate of 9.6Gbps. In January 2022, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced the Wi-Fi 6 version 2 standard.
It is understood that the Wi-Fi 6 version 2 standard improves the uplink and power management of all supported frequency bands (2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz) and is suitable for routers and devices in the home and workplace, as well as smart home IoT devices. In general, compared with previous generations of WiFi technology, the new generation of Wi-Fi 6 has the advantages of faster speed, lower latency, larger capacity, more security, and more power saving.
Even so, due to the increasingly high throughput and latency requirements of new scene applications, such as 4K and 8K video (the transmission rate may reach 20Gbps), immersive AR/VR, real-time collaboration, wireless games (low latency requirements) 5ms), telecommuting, online video conferencing and cloud computing, etc., the new generation of WiFi6 still cannot fully meet the demand. In response to this, the IEEE 802.11 standards organization expects to release a new revised standard IEEE 802.11be EHT, namely Wi-Fi 7, by the end of 2022.
WiFi7 has the characteristics of high network throughput, low latency, high transmission volume, high reliability, and high stability, which can greatly improve the networking performance, which is very important for various experiences of future applications in new scenarios. Based on this, the three major chip manufacturers Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Broadcom are sparing no effort to promote the development of Wi-Fi 7. For example, Qualcomm said that Wi-Fi7 chips have already started shipping at this stage, and terminal products are expected to be available before the end of this year, and will be shipped in large quantities in 2023.
MediaTek released Wi-Fi7 chips, Filogic880 and Filicic380, which provide industry-leading router and gateway solutions for high-bandwidth applications in the carrier, retail, commercial and consumer electronics markets. At the 2022 Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm released the 14nm chip FastConnect7800 that supports Wi-Fi7 and Bluetooth 5.3. ZTE also showed the world’s first Wi-Fi7 terminal MC888 Flagship in the form of CPE (Customer Premises Equipment).
In the era of the Internet of Things, whether it is 5G mobile communication technology or Wi-Fi technology, it is closely related to production and life. From consumer electronics, industry, automobiles, to smart homes and other fields, Wi-Fi technology can be seen everywhere and contains very large development potential. As more and more manufacturers enter the game and preempt the pit, will Wi-Fi7 land and multi-scenario integrated applications such as edge computing, metaverse, extended reality (XR), remote office, and social games still be far behind?
