It feels like we’ve just only begun shifting our devices to WiFi 6 connectivity, and somehow WiFi 7 is already a thing. MediaTek has announced that they’ll be carrying out the world’s first live demonstrations of WiFi 7 technology, specifically using their Filogic lineup of connectivity system-on-chips.
WiFi 7, also known as IEEE 802.11be, is currently in development by the WiFi Alliance and they expect to fully publish the new WiFi 7 specifications in 2024. That’s not stopping MediaTek already showing off WiFi 7 though, and the Taiwanese semiconductor company is also planning to release chips with support for WiFi 7 connectivity by 2023. MediaTek’s demo will highlight their Filogic technology’s abilities to achieve the current maximum speeds for WiFi 7 as well as a new multi-link operation (MLO) feature. MLO aggregates channels on different frequency bands simultaneously, and allows for stable traffic even if there’s interference and congestion on the bands.
“Faster broadband Internet access and more demanding applications such as higher resolution video streaming and VR gaming are driving demand for Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, and soon Wi-Fi 7.
Wi-Fi 7’s advances in channel width, QAM, and new features such as multi-link operation (MLO) will make Wi-Fi 7 very attractive for devices including flagship smartphones, PCs, consumer devices and vertical industries like retail and industrial; as service providers begin to deploy a wider spectrum of hotspots across these market segments,” – Mario Morales, Group VP of Semiconductors at International Data Corporation
WiFi 7 will use all of the available spectrums currently available to WiFi, namely 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz. It’s expected to bring up to 2.4x faster internet speeds compared to WiFi 6 when using the same number of antennas, thanks to its bandwidth increase from 160MHz on WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E to 320MHz in the 6GHz band. It’ll offer a maximum throughput of 30Gbps, while WiFi 5 can only offer up to 3.5Gbps, with WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E capable of 9.6Gbps. Other features of WiFi 7 includes support for 4K quadrature amplitude modulation technology, multi-user resource unit features and lower latencies with MLO technology. The final version of WiFi 7 is scheduled to be revealed by early 2024, and we should know more about its capabilities the closer we get to its release date.
As for MediaTek themselves, they are making some bold claims for WiFi 7. Alan Hsu, corporate vice president at MediaTek has said that their WiFi 7 technology is potentially the first real replacement for an Ethernet connection thanks to the higher bandwidth. He added that it should provide seamless connectivity for everything from multi-player AR and VR applications to cloud gaming, 8K streaming and the like. It helps that MediaTek has been working with the WiFi Alliance to develop the standard of course, as with other companies as well.
For more about MediaTek’s WiFi 7 demo, you can check out their announcement of it on their website here.
