Why Wi-Fi 6 works better and what the successors of Wi-Fi 6 will offer

The first devices for Wi-Fi 7, also known as IEEE 802.11be, are likely to appear in 2023. It took five years for it to receive the working title Extremely High Throughput (EHT). Wi-Fi 7, in its most expanded version, must carry gross 23 gigabits per second with a radio signal 320 MHz wide at 6 gigahertz, with 4096QAM encoding over eight MIMO streams.

Multilink Operation and Wi-Fi 7 Expansion Restricted Target Wake Time

The main innovation of Wi-Fi 7 is multilink operation. This means that a Wi-Fi base and a client can maintain simultaneous connections on different radio bands, increasing throughput or reliability. It will also be easier to change radio cells.

The Wi-Fi 7 Restricted Target Wake Time (r-TWT) extension falls within the scope of Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) of IEEE group 802.1. With r-TWT, only certain data services are allowed to broadcast at certain times, so that packets of time-critical services arrive on time. This is interesting for business users who until now had to rely on expensive private 5G networks for real-time applications.

Chip manufacturer Mediatek announces Wi-Fi 7 stations

Chip manufacturer Mediatek has announced two building blocks for Wi-Fi 7 stations at the end of 2022. Manufacturer TP-Link announced 16 devices in five categories with Wi-Fi 7 in mid-November, including Wi-Fi routers, 5G routers, mesh systems, business access points and carrier devices.

The thickest Wi-Fi router, the BE900, is expected to broadcast simultaneously with four Wi-Fi 7 modules on three bands via four MIMO streams (2.4, 2 × 5 and 6 GHz) each. TP-Link adds up to the maximum gross speeds of the individual blocks of 1376, 2 × 5760 and 11520 Mbit/s to an impressive 24 Gbps. The router sends that WiFi plethora to the LAN through two 10 Gbit/s ports and four for 2.5 Gbit/s. The router is expected to cost around $700 and be released in the US in the first quarter of 2023.

Vote on 11be draft 2.0 failed

At the vote in July 2022, the 11be draft 2.0 failed to reach the required 75 percent approval and the IEEE working group had to do another round. Nevertheless, according to insiders, the manufacturers’ association Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) is already working on a test program