Wi-Fi 7 is less than three years away and up to five times faster than Wi-Fi 6, says Intel

By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman

We’re hardly off the ground with Wi-Fi 6E and we’re already talking about Wi-Fi 7? Well – yes, and here’s the reason: If you think 6 GHz is a boost to Wi-Fi 6, wait until you see what the new standard is going to do with the new 6 GHz band. Here’s Intel’s well-explained and detailed preview of upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technology and features.

Wi-Fi 7 is less than three years away – says Intel – and the buzzwords for Wi-Fi 7 are very high throughput, extremely low latency and determinism. Carlos Cordeiro, Wireless CTO, Client Group at Intel, says Wi-Fi 7 will deliver up to five times the maximum data rate of Wi-Fi 6. But wider channels and faster modulation may not even be the most important aspects of the new standard. Wi-Fi 7 will introduce the concept of ‘Multi-Link Operation,’ or MLO – and that is a big deal, Intel says.

MLO is something akin to ‘carrier aggregation’ in mobile, where devices operate on multiple channels at the same time. But MLO in Wi-Fi 7 is also more complex because of its various operational modes (see the excellent explanatory video below) designed to serve a variety of new use cases.

MLO will not just boost speed but vastly improve reliability and latency, too. For example: Imagine using different channels to transmit the same packets to create deterministic, high QoS services in factories and for other industrial or mission-critical applications, explains Carlos Cordeiro. Similarly, MLO can be used to guarantee low latency by making use of multiple bands at the same time.

For all the details on the new standard make sure you spend 35 minutes with Intel’s Wireless CTO Carlos Cordeiro below!

/Claus.