The next version of the great wireless connectivity standard, Wi-Fi 7, is still in development and won’t be long before it hits the market. Although Wi-Fi 6 (and Wi-Fi 6E) represented a leap forward from previous standards, Wi-Fi 7 will be the version that definitely allows replace local cable networks via wireless connections.

Wi-Fi 7 is defined as 802.11be and points to two key benefits that are repeated in each new version of the standard: higher speeds and reduced network congestion. According to the responsible body WiFi Alliance, the new version will support throughput of 30 Gbps or more, which is a big step up from the maximum speeds of 9.6 Gbps available in Wi-Fi 6.

Several vendors are working on its launch, and we’ve now obtained Intel’s roadmap from a press conference held by the company’s vice president of wireless solutions, Eric McLaughlin. Although the chip giant has exited the router and gateway business, the company remains the world’s number one maker of Wi-Fi modules for personal computers.

According to the manager, Intel chips with Wi-Fi 7 support will be released in late 2024 and will be released on laptops to later expand into other segments of personal computers.

Needless to say, with this schedule, Intel could fall behind the competition. The first network devices with Wi-Fi 7 (routers, access points, etc.) are expected in 2023, and providers such as MediaTek and Qualcomm have already made technology presentations of the new standard with the ARM architecture. We’ll see.

Wi-Fi 7 main functions

• Theoretical data transfer speed up to 46 Gbps. A monumental increase compared to Wi-Fi 6’s 9.6 Gbps.
• bandwidth 320 MHz (320/160+160 MHz and 240/160+80 MHz), which is double that of Wi-Fi 6.
• More efficient use of contiguous and non-contiguous spectrum.
• Aggregation and multi-band/multi-channel operation.
• Quadrature amplitude modulation QAM up to 4094 compared to the previous 1024.
• Doubling the number of spatial streams from 8 to 16 and improving the MIMO function.
• Improved resource allocation in OFDMA.
• Multi-User Resource Unit (MRU) increase the possibility of connecting more devices at a higher speed and with fewer interruptions.
• Improvements to Multi-Link Operation (MLO) technology, which aggregates multiple channels in different frequency bands simultaneously to improve network traffic. Essential for streaming the game.
• Coordination of multiple access points (AP) in coordinated and joint transmission.
• Improved line adaptation and retransmission protocol, especially in hybrid automatic repeat requests (HARQ).