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How Wifi 7 could transform life, work and play
Report from the Wireless Broadband Alliance sets out how Wifi 7 will enable smart city, consumer, Industry 4.0 and other applications, previously impractical.
The WBA is working with members to conduct field trials of technologies in real-life Wifi 7 networks
‘Revolutionary’ Wifi 7, which will provide twice the bandwidth and three times the speed of Wifi 6, will play a fundamental role in transforming how people worldwide will live, work and play, a new report finds.
According to the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s (WBA) report Get Ready for Wifi 7: Applying New Capabilities to the Key Use Cases, Wifi 7 will enable smart city, enterprise, Industry 4.0, medical, consumer, and other applications that are “impractical or impossible” with other wired and wireless technologies.
Extreme High Throughput
Based on the IEEE 802.11be (Extreme High Throughput) standard, Wifi 7 has a wide variety of advanced capabilities that will improve existing use cases or enable new ones that are not possible with existing wired and wireless technologies, WBA states. The report is available as a free download from WBA.
The 43-page paper, led by WBA members Broadcom, CableLabs, Cisco, and Intel, explores many of Wifi 7’s major new capabilities and applications, such as:
- Double the bandwidth and three times the speed of Wifi 6: Wifi 7 supports channel widths up to 320 MHz, while Wifi 5 and Wifi 6 are limited to 160 MHz. It also supports 4k QAM, which is an upgrade over prior standards. With wider channels and 4K QAM capabilities, Wifi 7 can deliver speeds over three times faster than Wifi 6. This is critical for enabling whole-home multi-gigabit wifi service
- Advanced support for latency-sensitive use cases: Wifi 7 devices can use multi-link operation (MLO) in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands to increase throughput by aggregating multiple links or to quickly move critical applications to the optimal band using seamless switching between links. Fast link switching allows Wifi 7 devices to avoid interference and access wifi channels without delaying critical traffic. This and other new features also make Wifi 7 ideal for immersive XR/AR/VR, online gaming and other consumer applications that require high throughput, low latency, minimal jitter, and high reliability.
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The WBA is actively collaborating with its members to conduct field trials of these technologies in real-life Wifi 7 networks. These trials are open to all interested industry players and are a crucial platform for mobile device and AP vendors, operators, and service providers to collectively test Wifi 7 capabilities in key deployments scenarios.
In these trials, participants will gain invaluable hands-on, real-world insights into deploying Wifi 7 across operator, residential, and enterprise networks. As with its Wifi 6 trials, the WBA will share comprehensive reports that offer indispensable knowledge and serve as a reference for industry stakeholders.
“With Wifi 7, business, service providers and smart cities now have a new option for quickly deploying enterprise-grade gigabit broadband outdoors, such as to connect buildings around an office campus, apartment complex or downtown”
“With Wifi 7, business, service providers and smart cities now have a new option for quickly deploying enterprise-grade gigabit broadband outdoors, such as to connect buildings around an office campus, apartment complex or downtown,” said Gabriel Desjardins, director of product marketing, Wireless Communications and Connectivity Division, Broadcom.
“Get Ready for Wifi 7 showcases the revolutionary capabilities that will enable Wifi 7 to help bridge the digital divide and enable new use cases across consumer, business, education, government, medical, industrial, hospitality, public venues and transportation,” said Tiago Rodrigues, president and CEO, Wireless Broadband Alliance.
“WBA and its members are once again leading the way in providing and educating the industry on the next generation of Wifi 7 innovation.”
Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) is the global organisation that aims to connects people with the latest wifi initiatives. Founded in 2003, its mission is to enable collaboration between service providers, technology companies, cities, regulators and organisations.
Why not try these links to see what our SmartCitiesWorld AI can tell you.
(Please note this is an experimental service)
How does Wifi 7 achieve three times the speed of Wifi 6?What role does multi-link operation play in reducing Wifi 7 latency?How can Wifi 7 support smart city outdoor gigabit broadband deployment?Which new applications become possible with Wifi 7’s 320 MHz channels?How will Wifi 7 trials improve real-world enterprise network deployments?
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