Wi-Fi 7 is finally official: it will push the adoption of augmented reality

We have been familiar with the new standard for more than a year WiFi 7and the first ones have already arrived on the market a few months ago routerphones and PCs to support it, the Wi-Fi Alliance he hadn’t cast it yet officially.

But now the wait is over, and the protocol for next generation connections is among us: let’s discover the specifications, the use cases and supported devices, but not before reminding you of our dedicated in-depth analysis, in which you can discover in more detail the characteristics and differences with the previous standard Wi-Fi 6E.

Let’s start from functionality of Wi-Fi 7, which include ultra-wide channels a 320MHz (at least in countries that make the 6 GHz band available), double the current channels and therefore capable of facilitating speed multigigabit And throughput better.

Another feature is the new technology Multi-Link Operation (MLO)which allows devices to transmit and receive data simultaneously over multiple links to increase the throughput, reduce the latency and improve reliability

QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) increases fourfold, from 1024-QAM on Wi-Fi 6 to QAM 4K (4096-QAM), which allows the transmission speed to be increased by 20% as the data density in the frequencies increases.

This solution also allows you to introduce a technique called Multi-User Resource Unit (MRU) at a single station (STA) which avoids interference through selective drilling (preamble puncturing) of overlapping portions of the spectrum to allow data to flow only on interference-free frequencies.

Wi-Fi 7 also includes a Uplink access activatedwhich optimizes activated uplink access defined by Wi-Fi 6 to accommodate latency-sensitive flows and meet requirements QoS (Quality of Service).

Finally the new standard includes 512 Block-acks compressed (a mechanism that allows multiple data frames to be transmitted in succession), which increases channel efficiency and introduces a solution for Emergency Preparedness Communications Services (EPCS) which allows you to provide seamless National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NSEP) service while maintaining priority and quality of service in Wi-Fi access networks.

There Wi-Fi Alliance declares that the use cases most impacted by the new technology will be the solutions dedicated to virtual reality (VR), increased (AR) e extended (XR) multi-user, the 3D training immersive, i video games, the industrial IoTthe sector of the automotive industry and, last but not least, also the hybrid work.

But which devices support Wi-Fi 7 at the moment? In the past few months we have already seen a series of products come onto the market, such as the new router Eero Max 7 which we reviewed in December, but the list is very extensive.

As for mobile SoCs, MediaTek Dimensity 9200, 9300, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 and other chips are Wi-Fi 7-ready, and companies including Broadcom, CommScope RUCKUS Networks, Intel, MaxLinear, MediaTek And Qualcomm have already launched Wi-Fi 7 certified products.

According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, in fact, smartphones, PCs, tablets and access points (APs) will be the first devices to adopt Wi-Fi 7, but in the future it is expected that products dedicated to virtual and augmented reality, thanks to the new technology, will gain more and more importance in the market.