Wi-Fi 6 is just being used, and Wi-Fi 7 from the three major players is already on the way

The latest generation of Wi-Fi technology, Wi-Fi 6, has just begun to become popular, and the next generation of Wi-Fi technology has already begun research and development, with the speed expected to increase by 3 times.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 is one of the first mobile phone SoCs to support Wi-Fi 6. So with the launch of mobile phones equipped with Snapdragon 865 and other mobile phones that support Wi-Fi 6, this new connection technology has begun to spread rapidly. At the same time, there are more and more wireless routers that support Wi-Fi 6.

Now, we are waiting for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology, which should be called Wi-Fi 7. It is understood that the three major chip giants - Qualcomm, Broadcom and MediaTek are already developing related technologies, but this latest Wi-Fi technology will not be used soon. Qualcomm expects that the launch of this technology will take at least 2-3 years.

Recently, Qualcomm Vice President Rahul Patel pointed out that Qualcomm has launched and mass-produced multiple Wi-Fi 6 products in the past two years, which are widely used in smartphones, PCs, and routers. Wi-Fi 6E products have also been mass-produced since the second half of last year. Qualcomm has already started the research and development of Wi-Fi 7.

Qualcomm predicts that Wi-Fi 7 will double network speeds compared to Wi-Fi 6.

Wi-Fi 7 can also combine multiple spectrums, which should mean higher-quality connections, but again, this isn't going to be widely available anytime soon.

In addition to Qualcomm, chip companies such as Broadcom and MediaTek are also actively developing Wi-Fi 7 chips. In this year's shareholder report, chip manufacturers stated that they have begun to actively invest in the next generation of Wi-Fi 7, and the battlefield has extended from smartphones and PCs to more fields. For the entire mobile communications industry, this is undoubtedly a healthy competition.

By the way, Wi-Fi 7 is likely to be the commercial name of the future 802.11be standard. Compared with the maximum 8 data streams of Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7 will support 16 data streams and CMU-MIMO technology. Among them, C stands for Coordinated, which means that the 16 data streams may not be provided by one access point, but by multiple access points at the same time.

Secondly, Wi-Fi 7 will continue to support the 6GHz band, and the three bands can be connected and work simultaneously, expanding the width of a single channel from 160MHz of Wi-Fi 6 to 320MHz.

Wi-Fi 7 also upgrades the signal modulation method to 4096QAM to have a larger data capacity. Therefore, the final speed of Wi-Fi 7 can reach 30Gbps, which is three times the speed of the fastest Wi-Fi 6 currently launched at 9.6Gbps.

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