IEEE 802.11be, dubbed ''Extremely High Throughput (EHT)'', is the next amendment of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commu ...

standard, which will be designated . It will build upon

802.11ax IEEE 802.11ax, officially marketed by the Wi-Fi Alliance as (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) and (6 GHz), is an IEEE standard for wireless local-area networks (WLANs) and the successor of 802.11ac. It is also known as ''High Efficiency'' , fo ...

, focusing on

WLAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

indoor and outdoor operation with stationary and pedestrian speeds in the 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz frequency bands. Speeds are expected to reach a theoretical maximum of 46 Gbit/s, although actual results will be much lower. Development of the 802.11be amendment is ongoing, with an initial draft in March 2021, and a final version expected by early 2024. Despite this, numerous products were announced in 2022 based on draft standards, with retail availability in early 2023.

Core features

The following are core features that have been approved as of Draft 3.0: * 4096-

QAM Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is the name of a family of digital modulation methods and a related family of analog modulation methods widely used in modern telecommunications to transmit information. It conveys two analog message signal ...

(4K-QAM) enables each symbol to carry 12 bits rather than 10 bits, resulting in 20% higher theoretical transmission rates than WiFi 6’s 1024-QAM. * Contiguous and non-contiguous 320/160+160 MHz and 240/160+80 MHz bandwidth * Multi-Link Operation (MLO), a feature that increases capacity by simultaneously sending and receiving data across different frequency bands and channels. (2.4GHz, 5Ghz, 6GHz) * Up to 100x lower latency through the use of MLO * 16 spatial streams and Multiple Input Multiple Output (

MIMO In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output, or MIMO (), is a method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmission and receiving antennas to exploit multipath propagation. MIMO has become an essential element of wir ...

) protocols enhancements * Flexible Channel Utilization - Interference currently can negate an entire Wi-Fi channel. With preamble puncturing, a portion of the channel that is impacted by interference can be blocked off while continuing to use the rest of the channel.

Candidate features

The main candidate features mentioned in the 802.11be Project Authorization Request (PAR) are: * Multi-Access Point (AP) Coordination (e.g. coordinated and joint transmission), * Enhanced link adaptation and retransmission protocol (e.g. Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ)), * If needed, adaptation to regulatory rules specific to 6 GHz spectrum, * Integrating

Time-Sensitive Networking Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a set of standards under development by the Time-Sensitive Networking task group of the IEEE 802.1 working group. The TSN task group was formed in November 2012 by renaming the existing Audio Video Bridging Ta ...

(TSN)

IEEE 802.1Q IEEE 802.1Q, often referred to as Dot1q, is the networking standard that supports virtual local area networking (VLANs) on an IEEE 802.3 Ethernet network. The standard defines a system of VLAN tagging for Ethernet frames and the accompanying proc ...

extensions for low-latency real-time traffic: **

IEEE 802.1AS The Precision Time Protocol (PTP) is a protocol used to synchronize clocks throughout a computer network. On a local area network, it achieves clock accuracy in the sub-microsecond range, making it suitable for measurement and control systems. ...

timing and synchronisation ** IEEE 802.11aa MAC Enhancements for Robust Audio Video Streaming (

Stream Reservation Protocol Stream Reservation Protocol (SRP) is an enhancement to Ethernet that implements admission control. In September 2010 SRP was standardized as IEEE 802.1Qat which has subsequently been incorporated into IEEE 802.1Q, IEEE 802.1Q-2011. SRP defines the ...

over IEEE 802.11) ** IEEE 802.11ak Enhancements for Transit Links Within Bridged Networks (802.11 links in 802.1Q networks) ** Bounded latency: credit-based (IEEE 802.1Qav) and cyclic/time-aware traffic shaping (IEEE 802.1Qch/Qbv), asynchronous traffic scheduling (IEEE 802.1Qcr-2020) ** IEEE 802.11ax Scheduled Operation extensions for reduced jitter/latency

Additional features

Apart from the features mentioned in the PAR, there are newly introduced features: * Newly introduced 4096-

(4K-QAM), * Contiguous and non-contiguous 320/160+160 MHz and 240/160+80 MHz bandwidth, * Frame formats with improved forward-compatibility, * Enhanced resource allocation in

OFDMA Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) is a multi-user version of the popular orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) digital modulation scheme. Multiple access is achieved in OFDMA by assigning subsets of subcarriers t ...

, * Optimized

channel sounding Channel sounding is a technique that evaluates the radio environment for wireless communication, especially MIMO systems. Because of the effect of terrain and obstacles, wireless signals propagate in multiple paths (the ''multipath'' effect). To min ...

that requires less airtime, * Implicit channel sounding, * More flexible preamble puncturing scheme, * Support of direct links, managed by an access point.

Rate set

Comparison

802.11be Task Group

The 802.11be Task Group is led by representatives of Qualcomm, Intel, and Broadcom. Representatives of Huawei, Maxlinear, NXP, and Apple also have senior positions.

Commercial availability

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

announced its FastConnect 7800 series on 28 Feb 2022 using 14nm chips. As of March 2023, the company claims 175 devices will be using their Wifi 7 chips, including smartphones, routers, and access points.

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

followed on 12 April 2022 with a series of 5 chips covering home, commercial, and enterprise uses. The TP-Link Archer BE900

wireless router A wireless router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a wireless access point. It is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network. Depending on the manufacturer and mode ...

was available to consumers in April 2023. The company's Deco BE95

mesh networking A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate wit ...

system was also available that month.

Client devices

The OnePlus 11 was released in February 2023. It uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip with Wifi7 enabled. The ASUS ROG Phone 7 is a gaming smartphone announced in April 2023. It also uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip with Wifi7 enabled. The Lenovo Legion Slim 7 Gen8 laptop supports Wifi7 using the MediaTek Filogic 380 Wi-Fi 7 card.

Notes

References

{{IEEE standards be Networking standards Wireless communication systems