A little over three years ago we were surprised by the arrival of WiFi 6 and a little later by WiFi 6E, two standards that have not yet been imposed in the majority of homes or devices but that They already have a successor readythe new WiFi 7 standard, which promises to revolutionize the home connectivity sector.
The official arrival of WiFi 7 to homes It was initially scheduled for sometime in the spring of 2024, although some companies have already been announcing and putting theoretically compatible equipment on sale throughout 2023. This is the case of MediaTek, which has done the first tests, or TP-Link that have gone ahead by offering the first models of routers and compatible equipment.
However, these products are designed based on some preliminary draft version of the standard, since there is still no certified final version of it on the market. When will this situation change and can we have a fully operational protocol?
WiFi 7 already has a date and spectacular specifications
Well, those responsible for defining the standard are the WiFi Alliancewho have published a recent entry on their website where they comment that they have already set a more specific date for the release of the final specifications.
As we can read in it, the certification for WiFi 7, based on the IEEE 802.11be standard, it will be available before the end of the first quarter of 2024, which will mean that starting this new year, compatible terminals and equipment will begin to hit the market en masse. In fact, some estimates point to more than 84 million compatible devices during the next season.
Very good, but what does WiFi 7 offer compared to what we already have on the market now and why it will be interesting. Well basically it promises more transmission capacity with lower latencies and better stabilityas we can see below.
Image: IEEE, Intel Corporation and WiFi Alliance
WiFi 7 was born thinking of being the standard that allows for the massive implementation of the arrival of new forms of leisure and teleworking, driving virtual reality, augmented and extended reality applications (AR/VR/XR) that are still to be developed.
Likewise, it will be allowed Minimize latency in gamesa relevant point in the era of streaming gaming and promises to be more efficient consuming less energy in its operation.
To do this, WiFi 7 uses a connectivity system based on real triple bandbeing compatible with those of 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHzbut unlike previous versions of the standard it will be possible use several of them simultaneously.
Also doubles bandwidth and speed with respect to previous standards, increasing the channel bandwidth from 160 MHz of WiFi 6/6E to 320MHz. This allows us to offer maximum speeds that exceed 40 Gbpswhich translates to a four-fold increase over WiFi 6E.
Also MIMO system has been improved (multiple input, multiple output) already present in previous protocols, going from 8 data flows to a total of 16. This offers higher transfer rates, more coveragemore users connected at the same time and a generally more stable network.
Cover image | PXHere
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