The battle for Wi-Fi 7 is about to begin

The summer of 2022 is coming, and the person to thank every summer must be the beautiful and intelligent mother of Wi-Fi, Hedy Lamarr. Earlier, when 5G was just beginning to be commercialized, some people thought that the arrival of 5G might be the end of Wi-Fi. But the facts have proved that even in 2022, Wi-Fi is still an indispensable part of life.

Wireless communication technology is an important technology that has changed our lives. It plays an important role in unloading cellular network traffic. With the development of WLAN technology, families and enterprises are increasingly relying on Wi-Fi and use it as the main means of accessing the network. According to IDC data, global Wi-Fi chip shipments will reach 4.9 billion in 2022.

Mobile communication technology is constantly being updated and upgraded, and Wi-Fi technology is also constantly developing. Before we know it, Wi-Fi 7 has quietly arrived.

1. Wi-Fi 7, lightning-fast connection

In recent years, the emergence of new applications such as 4K and 8K video, VR/AR, games, remote office, online video conferencing and cloud computing has continuously increased the requirements for network throughput and latency. The entire industry is already in the early stages of the development of the next generation of Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi 7 is the next-generation Wi-Fi standard. Although there is more than one next-generation Wi-Fi standard, "Wi-Fi 7" is just a commercial symbol used by the Wi-Fi Alliance to promote to ordinary consumers. However, it generally refers to the new Wi-Fi device specification based on the 802.11be draft launched in May 2021, which has not yet been finally approved.

According to reports, the entire Wi-Fi 7 protocol standard will be released in two releases. Release 1 is expected to be released at the end of 2022; Release 2 is expected to be launched in early 2022 and completed by the end of 2024.

If Wi-Fi 6 released in 2019 only provides higher speeds than Wi-Fi 5, then Wi-Fi 7 provides lightning-fast connections. According to the data, Wi-Fi 7 is expected to support up to 30Gbps throughput and a maximum network speed of 46.4Gbps, which is 4.8 times the maximum speed of 9.6Gbps of WiFi 6.

From the above figure, compared with the previous Wi-Fi 4, Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, and Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 introduces new technologies or improves existing technologies in many aspects such as frequency band, maximum bandwidth, modulation method, and MIMO.

2. Continue to introduce the 6GHz frequency band and support a maximum bandwidth of 320MHz

Wi-Fi 7 will take full advantage of the new 6GHz band (actually 5.925-7.125GHz).

6GHz Wi-Fi is different from 6G. 6GHz refers to the frequency band currently used in Wi-Fi networks and is first supported in Wi-Fi 6E, while 6G represents the 6th generation standard of broadband cellular network technology.

Compared to 2.4 GHz, 5GHz and other frequency bands, 6GHz operates on a higher frequency band and provides greater bandwidth, which translates into faster speeds and more capacity, making it suitable for high-bandwidth and low-latency activities such as streaming and gaming.

Currently, the 6GHz band is occupied only by Wi-Fi applications, and using it causes much less interference than the 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands.

For faster connections, Wi-Fi 7 adds new bandwidth modes from the original 160MHz in Wi-Fi 6, including continuous 240MHz, non-continuous 160+80MHz, continuous 320 MHz, and non-continuous 160+160MHz.

3. Introducing Multi-Link Mechanism

In order to achieve efficient use of all available spectrum resources, Wi-Fi 7 defines multi-link aggregation-related technologies, including enhanced multi-link aggregation MAC architecture, multi-link channel access, and multi-link transmission technologies, which can combine multiple channels of different frequencies to provide better network performance. Wi-Fi 7 attempts to enhance these links by increasing throughput, which is a measurement of data between devices in a local network (LAN).

4. Introducing higher-order 4096-QAM modulation technology

To further increase the rate, Wi-Fi 7 will introduce 4096-QAM, which allows modulation symbols to carry 12 bits. Under the same coding, Wi-Fi 7's 4096-QAM can achieve a 20% rate increase over Wi-Fi 6's 1024-QAM.

5. Support for more data streams and enhanced MIMO capabilities

In Wi-Fi 7, the number of spatial streams increases from 8 in Wi-Fi 6 to 16, which can theoretically more than double the physical transmission rate.

Supporting more data streams will also bring more powerful features - distributed MIMO, which means that 16 data streams can be provided by multiple access points simultaneously instead of one access point, which means that multiple APs need to work together.

6. Lower latency

The above-mentioned MLO, wider channels and other technologies will further reduce network latency and make it more predictable.

7. Giants rush to build their presence

Even though the global Wi-Fi 7 technical specifications have not yet been finalized, driven by new concepts and applications such as the metaverse, autonomous driving, and AIOT, the industry is naturally generally optimistic about the subsequent market development.

Faced with the objective blue ocean market in the future, the leading Wi-Fi chip manufacturers will naturally seize the opportunity. Since 2022, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, three major manufacturers, have successively released Wi-Fi 7 main control chips or demonstrated their related technologies.

1. Broadcom

Broadcom was the first supplier to announce a complete Wi-Fi 7 product portfolio. In April, Broadcom launched its first WiFi 7 SoC, called BCM4916, which uses a quad-core Armv8 processor with 64KB of L1 cache and 1MB of L2 cache, capable of providing 24 DMIPS of performance.

The SoC supports DDR3 and DDR4 memory, as well as 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps network interfaces, and provides a USB 3.2 interface.

In addition, Broadcom also released its Wi-Fi 7 ecosystem product portfolio, including BCM6726 and BCM67263 for consumer products, BCM43740 and BCM73720 for enterprise products, and BCM4398 for mobile devices. BCM6726 supports 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz bands, while BCM67263 only supports 6 GHz band. Currently, in the field of Wi-Fi 7, Broadcom is providing samples to major customers.

2. Qualcomm

At the end of February this year, Qualcomm launched the world's first Wi-Fi 7 chip "FastConnect 7800".

FastConnect 7800 fully supports all features of Wi-Fi 7, supports three major frequency bands: 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz, supports high-frequency multi-connection concurrent technology, 4-way dual-band features expanded to high frequency bands, and 4K QAM modulation technology. The peak transmission speed can reach 5.8Gbps, which is up to 60% higher than the previous generation, and supports a latency of less than 2ms.

Qualcomm claims that compared to previous generation products, it can provide 50% reduction in power consumption, 2 times the pairing speed, and 2 times the signal reception range.

Currently, FastConnect 7800 is available for sampling and is expected to be put into commercial use in the second half of this year. The first batch of customers include Acer, ASUS, Honor, Meta (Facebook), OPPO, Tencent, vivo, Xiaomi, etc.

3. MediaTek

In January this year, MediaTek conducted the world's first live demonstration of Wi-Fi 7.

It is reported that compared with the 160MHZ channel of Wi-Fi 6, MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 can use 320MHz channel and 4K quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technology. Under the condition of using the same number of antennas, the transmission speed is 2.4 times faster than Wi-Fi 6, and the peak speed can fully reach the 30Gbps defined by IEEE 802.11be.

In addition, MediaTek's Wi-Fi 7 will also support multiple Wi-Fi frequency bands including 2.4G, 5G, and 6G, and use multi-link operation (MLO) technology to simultaneously aggregate multiple channels on different frequency bands to reduce latency and meet the network speed connection requirements of different devices and scenarios. It has a multi-user resource unit (MRU) function to reduce and avoid signal interference, and meet the needs of multiple people for simultaneous, high-speed connections.

MediaTek revealed that products using Wi-Fi 7 technology are expected to be available in 2023.

In addition to the Wi-Fi main control chip, different WiFi technologies have different requirements for RF products. Since the Wi-Fi 5 standard, Wi-Fi RF front-end chips have gradually been externalized. The more advanced it is, the higher the requirements for the RF front-end and the higher the requirements for the process. Manufacturers including Qorvo have also begun to strengthen the deployment of Wi-Fi 7 chip front-end modules (FEM).

In January, Qorvo introduced the first broadband front-end module (FEM) covering the 5.1 GHz to 7.1 GHz frequency bands. This new tri-band FEM not only maximizes capacity, but also simplifies design, shortens time to market, and reduces front-end circuit board space by 50%.

Although this FEM is mainly designed to improve the three-band Wi-Fi 6E function, the expansion of frequency band coverage has also shown Qorvo's determination to obtain Wi-Fi 7 chip FEM.

8. There is still a long way to go in China

As industry giants rush to establish their presence, local manufacturers naturally follow closely behind.

Take my country's communications giant Huawei as an example. According to IPlytics statistics, as of October last year, Huawei had submitted and adopted the most contributions to TGbe (Wi-Fi 7 Standard Working Group). At the same time, Huawei has still submitted the most contributions to the four generations of wireless standards from Wi-Fi 4 to the present.

In addition to Huawei, in March, ZTE took the lead in launching the world's first Wi-Fi 7 standard 5G CPE product MC888 flagship product at MWC, integrating 5G high-speed and Wi-Fi 7 high-concurrency technology, with the world's highest peak network download rate of 10Gbps.

In April, New H3C Group, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, launched the world's first enterprise-class intelligent native Wi-Fi 7 AP products, including two products, WA7638 and WA7338, which support tri-band 12-stream and tri-band 10-stream, with a maximum transmission rate of 18.44Gbps.

As a big country with vast land and a large population, the Chinese market has always had unlimited potential, and the Wi-Fi field is no exception. According to IDC's forecast of Wi-Fi market penetration, China's Wi-Fi 6 market size is expected to reach US$470 million by 2024, increasing from approximately 31% of the market in 2020 to more than 90%.

In the field of smart home supported by Wi-Fi, IDC reports show that the shipment volume of smart home device market in China exceeded 220 million units in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 9.2%. It is estimated that the shipment volume of smart home device market in China will exceed 260 million units in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 17.1%.

It can be said that in China's Wi-Fi industry, the market is vast and equipment manufacturers are also "showing their talents". However, in the most critical Wi-Fi chip field, due to the high market concentration, the participation of local manufacturers is not satisfactory. The top 6 WiFi chip manufacturers in the world occupy about 80% of the market share.

The complexity and high value of the Wi-Fi main chip itself account for 40% to 50% of the total cost of Wi-Fi equipment. Although Huawei has made the largest contribution to the submission and adoption of Wi-Fi 7, and its independently developed Lingxiao Wi-Fi chip has also developed well, there are currently no new technologies or products launched in the Wi-Fi 7 field.

In the past fifteen years, the global Wi-Fi chip market has been monopolized by companies such as Broadcom, Qualcomm, Marvell, Celeno, MediaTek, Quantenna, Espressif, and Realtek. It can be said that there is a large gap between mainland Chinese companies and them in the Wi-Fi core chip industry chain.

Current chip giants are already moving towards Wi-Fi 7, while domestic manufacturers are still focusing on mass production of Wi-Fi 5 and are in the process of transitioning to Wi-Fi 6.

It can be said that in the field of Wi-Fi chips, local manufacturers still have a long way to go.

9. Final Thoughts

In 2019, the birth of the Wi-Fi 6 standard and market demand brought great development opportunities to mainland chip manufacturers. "Wi-Fi 6" once became a must-have label for various mobile phone manufacturers to release new phones in 2020.

Then, the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 is bound to be a new opportunity for local manufacturers to overtake others, and what local manufacturers need to do now is to accumulate technology so that they can grasp the opportunity firmly in their hands.

After all, opportunities only come to those who are prepared.