By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
AI is everywhere at MWC this year – and the latest smartphone Wi-Fi 7 chip from Qualcomm dubbed ‘FastConnect 7900’ is no exception. Qualcomm is hiking Wi-Fi 7 performance with AI and is adding proximity with UWB (and more) while shrinking the chip itself and reducing power consumption by half. Qualcomm has pulled off another remarkable feat of industry leadership just as Wi-Fi 7 is about to take the world by storm. The new platform was released today and is expected to launch commercially in the second half of 2024, Qualcomm says.
As a clever friend of mine recently pronounced: These days Wi-Fi chips are about much, much more than just Wi-Fi. He’s right of course and the latest Wi-Fi 7 smartphone chip by Qualcomm is an excellent example of exactly that: The new tiny platform packs a remarkable punch featuring not just very high-performance Wi-Fi 7 connectivity but a nearly bewildering number of complimentary technologies all neatly integrated to support myriads of use cases, from gaming on your TV to opening your car door.
Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7900 – the company’s second generation Wi-Fi 7 chip for phones, compute, and wireless XR – is the industry’s first featuring an on-chip AI engine, the company says. Qualcomm doesn’t offer a lot of detail on the inner workings of the AI functionality but says AI in this case is used to both optimise the connectivity experience and deliver ‘extreme power efficiency,’ a must for smartphone manufacturers looking for better battery performance.
The chip delivers a whopping 5.8 Gbps of peak data rate. But that’s only where the magic starts, says Javier del Prado, VP & General Manager of Mobile Connectivity at Qualcomm. “In addition to being the first to incorporate AI into a Wi-Fi platform for smartphones, we’re proud to be introducing proximity capability with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Sounding, and – as another first – ultra-wideband, or UWB. Finally we continue to expand on our multi-device experiences, using HBS,” Javier del Prado says.
HBS means High Band Simultaneous – which is Qualcomm speak for two simultaneous Wi-Fi 7 links in 5 GHz or 6 GHz bands also called Multi-Link Operation (MLO) in the standard – nifty, for a range of use cases such as connecting to your router and your TV (or another device) at the same time for gaming or simply for boosting speed and reliability while lowering latency, Qualcomm says.
HBS has been available for a while but what hasn’t is Qualcomm’s new suite of integrated wireless technologies supporting proximity services. Short-range UWB means you may soon be able to use your phone to open your car door, while Bluetooth Sounding and Wi-Fi Ranging (IEEE 802.11az) delivers longer-range proximity capabilities. The three together literally introduce myriads of use cases, from unlocking your laptop with your phone, accessing rooms, finding your lost earbuds in the sofa, to finding your dog, and of course wayfinding within buildings.
On the audio side HBS technology now delivers 24-bit, 192 kHz audio over Wi-Fi from the Cloud to your router to your phone and finally to your earbuds, which means both range and quality of your wireless audio stream is vastly improved.
Last but not least: The hardware. The 6 nm FastConnect 7900 chip has shrunk compared to its FastConnect 7800 predecessor – and that’s gold for smartphone manufacturers looking to increase battery size in their devices. Qualcomm says the reason for the shrinkage is new and less power-hungry RF FEMs (front-end modules) as well as lower consumption through AI power optimization. The result is up to 50% less power and 50% smaller size compared to the previous generation, Qualcomm says. And all of that featuring thirteen radios. Remarkable indeed.
/Claus.
Below: More details on Qualcomm’s HBS and updated ‘XPAN’ audio capabilities in the FastConnect 7900 chip released today at MWC.
