On January 8, 2024 local time, the Wi-Fi Alliance officially announced the launch of the Wi-Fi Certified 7 certification program, which can improve Wi-Fi 7 (80211be) performance and improve connectivity between different Wi-Fi 7 devices in a variety of environments. This also means that Wi-Fi 7 is finally officially on the ground!We expect to see a range of Wi-Fi 7-enabled phones, laptops, routers, AR VR XR, and more this year.
According to reports, Wi-Fi 7's cutting-edge features enable innovations that rely on high throughput, low latency, and higher reliability. For example, Wi-Fi 7 will outperform existing standards for high-bandwidth streaming and low-latency wireless gaming, which is critical as virtual reality grows in popularity and meetings become more frequent.
While there are some Wi-Fi 7 devices on the market, without Wi-Fi Certified 7 certification, they may not be able to easily interconnect and interoperate with other Wi-Fi 7 devices. While Wi-Fi 7 is backwards compatible with previous Wi-Fi versions, older devices don't benefit from Wi-Fi 7 routers, but newer Wi-Fi Certified 7 certified devices do.
Wi-Fi Certified 7 pushes the boundaries of today's wireless connectivity, and Wi-Fi Certified helps ensure that advanced features are deployed in a consistent manner to deliver a high-quality user experience, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Advanced features include:
320 MHz channel: Available in countries where Wi-Fi is available in the 6GHz band, ultra-wide channels are twice as wide as the widest Wi-Fi channel (160MHz) available today.
While doubling the bandwidth, WiFi 7 is also capable of supporting up to 16 antennas to transmit and 16 antennas to receive signals (16 x 16), which is twice as many signals as the previous generation of standard 8 antennas, helping to achieve transmission speeds and throughput of up to 46Gbps, reaching 4 of Wi-Fi 68 times;
Multilink operation (MLO): Allows devices to transmit and receive data simultaneously over multiple links to increase throughput, reduce latency, and improve reliability.
This is essentially a type of wireless link aggregation, i.e., distributed over 2Bonded connections on two or three bands in the 4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands provide users with greater speed and stability. In other words, when a user is out of range of one AP signal, it does not mean that the user has to reconnect to connect to another AP.
MLO also provides a latency advantage. Usually device connections are limited by talk time, which is the amount of time it takes for a router to cycle through other routers that queue up to send packets over the network. Since all three bands are available at the same time, packets can be sent out immediately. It is estimated that compared with routes without multi-link aggregation technology, the speed can be increased by up to 92% and the latency can be reduced by 77%.
4K QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation): By increasing the modulation rate to 4096 QAM, each OFDM subcarrier can encode 12-bit data, resulting in a 20% increase in peak PHY data rates over 1024 QAM. This also means that latency can be reduced by 20%;
512 Compressed Block ACK: Increase efficiency and reduce overhead;
Multi-RUS corresponds to a STA: it improves the flexibility of spectrum resource scheduling and improves spectrum efficiency.
With WiFi 6, each user can only transmit or receive on the allocated resource unit (RU), which obviously limits the flexibility of spectrum resource scheduling, in order to solve this problem and further improve spectrum efficiency, WiFi 7 allows multiple RUs to be assigned to a single user, and RUS can be combined to improve transmission efficiency.
Preamble Puncturing: Previously busy channels meant that the frequency band could not be fully utilized, and data could only be sent through the main channel. Now, with Preamble Puncturing technology, it can automatically skip channels blocked by interference, improving transmission efficiency and reducing latency, bringing a more stable network experience.
Trigger uplink access: Optimize Wi-Fi 6 defined trigger uplink access to accommodate latency-sensitive flows and meet QoS requirements;
Emergency Preparedness Communications Services (EPCS): Provide users with a seamless*** and Emergency Preparedness (NSEP) service experience while maintaining the priority and quality of service for Wi-Fi access networks.
The Wi-Fi Alliance expects Wi-Fi 7 to see rapid adoption across a broad ecosystem, with more than 2024 expected3.3 billion devices entered the market and will grow to 2.1 billion devices by 2028. Smartphones, PCs, tablets, and access points (APs) will be the first adopters of Wi-Fi 7, client premises equipment (CPE), and augmented and virtual reality (AR VR) devices will continue to gain early market traction.
"The launch of Wi-Fi Certified 7 marks the advent of the latest generation of Wi-Fi and will accelerate the mass adoption of Wi-Fi 7," said Kevin Robinson, President and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. This certification underscores our relentless commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology that redefines the way users experience Wi-Fi, delivering faster speeds, greater efficiency, and greater reliability, expanding the possibilities of Wi-Fi. ”
Companies such as Broadcom, Commscope Ruckus Networks, Intel, Maxlinear, MediaTek and Qualcomm are among the companies that make up the certification test platform and will launch the first devices to support Wi-Fi Certified 7.
Overview of the Wi-Fi 7 upstream chain
The difficulties of Wi-Fi 7 chips are still in terms of IP maturity, Wi-Fi compatibility, and performance optimization experience in application scenarios. In general, the design is very difficult, and it requires a lot of manpower and capital investment.
From the perspective of Wi-Fi 7 chip vendors, Broadcom (such as BCM4916), Qualcomm (such as FastConnect 7800), MediaTek (Filogic 880 860 and FiLogic 380 360), and Intel (Killer 1750X) have all launched chips that support Wi-Fi 7 standards.
In contrast, although there is a significant gap between domestic Wi-Fi chip manufacturers and the above-mentioned international giants, there are also HiSilicon, ZTE, Espressif Technology, UNISOC and rising stars Kangxi Communications, Southern Silicon Valley, Xiwei Technology and other companies with the ability to develop Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6.
In terms of Wi-Fi 7 technology, domestic manufacturers such as Huawei HiSilicon, ZTE, and Unisplendour have also made some achievements.
In April 2023, Unisplendour Co., Ltd. said in an institutional survey that the Wi-Fi 7 AP single device delay launched by the company's H3C can be stable within 3ms, and the actual rate can exceed 10 gigabits, taking the lead in completing the industry's first Wi-Fi 7 AP test in China's Thiel Laboratory, refreshing the fastest Wi-Fi speed record, and the company's Wi-Fi 7 products have been put on sale.
In November 2023, Huawei officially announced that it had completed the industry's first Wi-Fi 7 AP performance test at its Tolly Lab in the United States, with a performance of over 13Gbps and a peak performance of over 4 per terminal33gbps。This data once again subverts all historical Wi-Fi performance test results, setting a new record for the fastest speed.
In December 2023, ZTE released its first Wi-Fi 7 router, the BE7200 Pro+, using its self-developed new-generation WiFi-7 SoC.
In terms of Wi-Fi 7 patents, the NGB report shows that Huawei's Wi-Fi 7 standard patent contribution ranks first in the world, with a total of 482 contributions, accounting for 229%, ranking first in the world. Qualcomm, which ranks second, accounts for 152%, and Intel, which ranks third, accounts for 95%。
In addition, ZTE is known for 21%, ranking tenth. ZTE also previously said on the interactive platform that it currently has more than 100 Wi-Fi 7 standard patents. OPPO ranked 18th with a 1% share.
Editor: Xinzhixun-Rogue Sword.