What is Wi-Fi 7?

What is Wi-Fi 7?

With our world revolving around mobile and always online devices, Wi-Fi has been the go-to wireless technology to keep all our gadgets connected. And with every passing generation, the Wi-Fi standard continues to improve while offering new features that appeal to the modern smart home user. Wi-Fi 7 is the next generation of this popular wireless technology that promises a giant leap forward over the previous two standards, Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. Although Wi-Fi 7 isn’t quite ready for public use, you can check out thebest Wi-Fi 6 mesh routersif you need an upgrade today.

Wi-Fi 7 is designed to significantly enhance the speed and reliability of the wireless networks in our homes to improve our experience. This will help us develop better smart home products and enable our devices to communicate and send data simultaneously at even higher rates. Wi-Fi 7 can also lead to high-quality wireless VR headsets with minimal latency for lag-free gaming or the possibility of wirelessly streaming 8K video content. In this guide, we cover the technical specifications of what makes Wi-Fi 7 unique and why it may help propel us to a future with more wireless freedom.

802.11be standards will be finalized soon

Before we get too deep, we would like to point out one simple fact: The final 802.11be Wi-Fi 7 amendment has yet to be published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). However, until then, these features and specs are merely standards that are expected to land when everything becomes official. Most of these standards, if not all, will likely make it into the final public release of Wi-Fi 7. However, they are subject to change, and there could also be new additions that we weren’t aware of earlier.

Many of these proposed changes about Wi-Fi 7 were circulated in apaper published by the IEEE(paywall) thatyou can read more easily here(PDF). Other details come courtesy of companies like Qualcomm, Intel, and MediaTek, which have a hand in developing the hardware and input in the standards they’ll use.

Wi-Fi 7 — aka 802.11be Extremely High Throughput

The Wi-Fi 7 standard is also known as 802.11be Extremely High Throughput. It’s doubtful that anyone will use that longer name, but the “be” suffix might appear on some spec sheets, so it’s worth keeping in mind. This is quite similar to Wi-Fi 6 and its extension Wi-Fi 6E, collectively known as 802.11ax.

Wi-Fi 7 will be backward compatible with prior Wi-Fi implementations, as expected. This means you don’t have to worry about a Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E device not working when you get anew Wi-Fi 7 router. The same goes for Wi-Fi 7-compatible client devices. They can easily connect to and interact with older Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, or Wi-Fi 5 access points without issues.

We’re still in the so-called “draft” stage for Wi-Fi 7, with an official certification of the wireless standard not too far off now. We expect Wi-Fi 7-certified products to become available on the public market sometime in 2024. However, some hardware might land early in 2023 based on the draft specs, and much of it should be compatible with the final version. If you’re weary of buying uncertified products, you can likely hold off until 2024, when they get the official certification approval.

Now that you know the basics and the schedule, let’s dive into exactly what is changing with this new version of Wi-Fi.

Wider channels for more speed

Wi-Fi 7’s headline change is probably an expansion to 320 MHz channels in the 6 GHz spectrum. If you aren’t familiar with the lingo, this means big things for the Wi-Fi standard overall. Simply put, it will significantly improve your home Wi-Fi experience — and we’ll explain why.

Generally speaking, wider channels give you a much larger pipe between your client devices and the wireless router, allowing for even higher transfer speed rates. This means the throughput for Wi-Fi 7 should be doubled compared to the 9.6 Gbps theoretical maximum of Wi-Fi 6E. However, when combined with other technologies, it should be even faster than that. We’ll touch on these later, but it will be a massive boost to wireless speed, and more significant than we’ve seen in previous Wi-Fi generations.

According to the IEEE, Wi-Fi 7 should allow a maximum transfer rate of 30 Gbps per access point. Compared to the previous generation, it should be about four times as fast as Wi-Fi 6. MediaTek estimates peak Wi-Fi 7 performance of around 36 Gbps, while Intel believes it might reach 46.1 Gbps. These are theoretical maximum speeds tested under a highly controlled and strict environment. In real-world circumstances, you won’t see that kind of transfer rate speed on your home network. However, you’ll still benefit from this substantial upgrade over Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E.

This expansion in channel size only applies to the new 6 GHz frequencies that landed as part of the Wi-Fi 6E wireless standard. The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies will still use up to a channel maximum of 40 MHz and 160 MHz, respectively. However, thanks to other improvements in Wi-Fi 7, even these lower-frequency and smaller channels may be able to operate faster than previously thought.

Lower latency

The previous Wi-Fi 6 standard considerably reduced client device latency but not enough for the more demanding applications. As AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) become increasingly popular, latency is still an issue. Known as motion-to-photon latency (MTP latency), this describes the lag time between objects and your actions in the virtual space. The lower the latency (measured in ms), the faster and more seamless your response times are. Even double-digit ms can negatively impact your experience. Wi-Fi 7 doesn’t substantially decrease “normal” latency but was designed to reduce lag effectively under the worst-case scenarios.

As you can see from the graph above, Wi-Fi 7/802.11be should have a substantial reduction in worst-case latency. Several methods achieve these reductions, like coordinated beamforming and parameterized spatial reuse. Those two examples are a few small ways to help improve corner-case circumstances where latency might otherwise spike. As such, they can also enhance overall reliability and throughput, giving you even more speed gains. Multiple Resource Unit (MRU), the next technology we’ll discuss, also offers latency improvements in certain circumstances.

MRU Puncturing

Wi-Fi 6E opened up a new set of consumer-friendly frequencies, convenient for dense urban environments. This is especially useful in areas where the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands are overly saturated and crossing over too frequently. This gives us a new wireless spectrum for our gadgets to connect to and use. However, it’s only partially open. Like every other set of frequencies that could be used for something, so-called “incumbents” or licensed users will be reserved for more dedicated purposes. This means portions of the spectrum aren’t available for you to use on your home network.

According to Cisco, theseincumbents include point-to-point fixed service links, satellite service, television broadcast, and even radar. Reserving a dedicated slice of the spectrum allows these specific uses to not interfere with the public 6 GHz frequency and vice versa. This is where the Multi-RU/MRU Puncturing feature comes into play.

This simple technology divides operating channels into sub-channels by 20 MHz chunks. Any incumbent use can then be partitioned off with a safe buffer. This is done to preserve the original channels rather than writing them off entirely. So if incumbent use interferes with the big 320 MHz channels, your router can automatically isolate those parts and use the rest just fine. Such a technique means the router won’t need to fall back on smaller channel sizes with lower speeds. This enables all incumbents to play nicely within the same wireless space while including everyone equally.

MRU also decreases latency when multiple uploads are co-occurring — happening simultaneously. Rather than queuing uploads sequentially to prevent devices from talking over one another, they can operate on separate sub-frequencies. Wi-Fi 6 could do that already. Still, this allows even further optimizations when upload data lengths differ on Wi-Fi 7.

Up to 16×16 (CMU-?) MIMO

The Wi-Fi standard has supported Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) for a while. However, Wi-Fi 6 took it to the next level. Previously, MIMO was only used to expand the pipe size of each device. Starting with Wi-Fi 6, it could allow multiple devices to simultaneously talk to the access point on separate pipes, the so-called Multiuser MIMO, or MU-MIMO.

Wi-Fi 6 and the Wi-Fi technology handled up to eight data streams (8×8 MIMO), but Wi-Fi 7 will expand that to up to 16 data streams, or 16×16 MIMO. As usual, an increase in pipes enables even faster wireless transfer speeds, which means more devices can “talk” to the router simultaneously. This allows additional users on the same network to stream content without any crossover issues, even less lag while gaming, and increases the reliability of your smart home devices, for example.

The IEEE didn’t mention it in its Wi-Fi 7 white paper, but there were plans to improve the MIMO technology further. In what they’re calling Coordinated Multiuser MIMO (CMU-MIMO), this feature was designed to help the MIMO process work better across multiple access points. It might be used to reduce interference in congested areas with numerous access points. We may also see improved speed and reliability for individual devices. However, we can’t say if this will ultimately be part of Wi-Fi 7. (We contacted the Wi-Fi Alliance to determine whether it’s still on the table for Wi-Fi 7.)

Multi-link Operation

Multi-link Operations (MLO) will do something that many people may have assumed Wi-Fi could do already. It enables the simultaneous use of multiple sets of frequencies. And we don’t just mean having your router transmit as an access point for client devices across 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz frequencies. This would allow a single client device to operate on an access point simultaneously using 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz channels.

The benefit here is wireless transfer speed. Two big pipes are better than one for sending and receiving data, and connecting multiple sources allows more traffic. According to Intel, this could result in 7.2 times the maximum aggregated data rate compared to Wi-Fi 6.

Like almost everything else in Wi-Fi 7, this also offers latency benefits. Suppose a device maintains a simultaneous connection across multiple bands. In that case, there’s no latency when it has to switch based on load balancing or traffic needs between them. Since it’s already connected, there doesn’t have to be a delay of tens or hundreds of milliseconds to move between them. It can also improve worst-case latency in a heavier network load by increasing the so-called “Transmission Opportunity.”

Other Wi-Fi 7 benefits

Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) was introduced in Wi-Fi 6E, and it’s how we can use this new 6 GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi without interfering with existing use. AFC means that in areas where radar or other broadcast sources still use those frequencies, transmit power is reduced to prevent interference. But in areas where there isn’t any incumbent use, power transmit levels can be cranked up. Again, this came from the previous Wi-Fi 6E generation. However, according to the IEEE, Wi-Fi 7 will expand how many devices can use AFC, increasing signal strength and connection reliability for more devices.

Another talking point feature, 4K Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (4K QAM), was introduced before Wi-Fi 7. Some Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E devices from companies like Qualcomm supported the technology in the past, but it will be the standard in Wi-Fi 7. Essentially, QAM is a way to squeeze more data inside the same signal — multiplexing. It gets interesting if you look at the modulated waveform’s so-called “constellation,” which visually shows, using a grid, just how much information can be stored within.

This visual is for fiber optics, but the idea is similar. More dots mean more individual phases and amplitudes in the signal, and more data can be crammed in.

Wi-Fi 6 offered 1K QAM, meaning 1,024 phases of magnitude can be crammed into a carrier signal. Wi-Fi 7, for example, will now allow for 4,096 phases of magnitude. However, this increase does not equate to a linear or straightforward bump in performance, as one might think initially. According to Litepoint, this should achieve apeak negotiated data rate increase of 20% over 1K QAMor a 20% bump in the maximum connection speed overall.

Other changes designed to benefit areas with congested networks or multiple access point networks are also in the works, as is a potentialRestricted Target Wake Timeadjustment. This allows networks to reserve capacity for specific use cases at certain times, inherited from the IoT-targetedWi-Fi HaLow standard. The potential here can be handy for industrial and enterprise purposes, among other things.

Wi-Fi 7 TL;DR

One thing is evident when you combine all the acronyms, numbers, and features: Wi-Fi 7 will be faster and more reliable. We’ve come full circle from the big-picture effect to the individual causes, but now you know why it will be better in these ways. For example, Wi-Fi 7 should be around four times faster than Wi-Fi 6 and 6E overall. And compatible devices may see better and more reliable connections in congested areas in previously troublesome spots. If you use VR, worst-case latency numbers will fall, and you may notice better streaming AR/VR performance.

Various features are only in theory until the final version of the Wi-Fi 7 spec is published. In the current draft stage, we may see other benefits added or some of these technologies removed if they aren’t ready for the masses. CMU-MIMO, for example, was a “maybe” for Wi-Fi 7 circa 2020 and 2021 and wasn’t directly mentioned in the IEEE’s 2021 white paper. But the technologies we are sure will make the cut should see Wi-Fi 7 deliver substantial increases in connection speed and reliability, with much-improved latency in corner-case situations.

Should you upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 right away?

The same old story occurs when new technology debuts. It’s expensive initially and gets cheaper as it slowly becomes the new standard. For example, some Wi-Fi 6E mesh networking systems had a price tag of $1,000 on day one, though they have since fallen. Regarding Wi-Fi 7, the average cost for the first models should start dropping after a year or two, making them an even more appealing option. If you don’t need all the new fancy Wi-Fi 7 features immediately or want to avoid the premium prices, you should be fine waiting it out for now.

For those who like to stay on the bleeding edge of technology, there might be a rush to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 when it lands. If you’re big into AR and VR, the latency gains in worst-case scenarios could be substantial and even observable in some applications. Wi-Fi 7 can also improve your experience with smart home devices and help eliminate wireless interference from your numerous 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz connections. Tapping into the 6 GHz frequency and all the extra features makes Wi-Fi 7 the perfect upgrade if you previously skipped Wi-Fi 6 and 6E.

Wi-Fi 7 should enable even more wireless freedom

Wi-Fi standards are increasingly complex, and combining minor technological and feature improvements will benefit your home network in various ways. From wider channels giving you more transfer speeds to lower latency for better response times, Wi-Fi 7 is a big deal going forward. Now that some of these changes have been brought to your attention, you know more about how and why Wi-Fi 7 is faster and better. And if you’ve been looking to upgrade your wireless router, especially from Wi-Fi 5, all the new features you gain with Wi-Fi 7 would be well worth the purchase.

Now that you know what makes Wi-Fi 7 unique, you should learn about thenew smart home standard called Matter. It’s designed to unify our smart home devices under a single ecosystem, allowing for faster setup and better synchronicity.

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This article is sponsored by Total Wireless.