
Wi-Fi 7 Technology White Paper
The first 802.11 standard provides a data rate up to 2 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz frequency band. 802.11b used a new encoding method to increase the rate to 11 Mbps. 802.11a introduced OFDM technology and uses 64-QAM modulation to increase the wireless rate to 54 Mbps at the 5 GHz frequency band. 802.11g applied the technology used in 802.11a to the 2.4 GHz frequency band, increasing the rate of the 2.4 GHz frequency band to 54 Mbps. Until 802.11ax, the data rate had increased by about 10000 times.
Evolving applications such as VR/AR, 4K/8K video, metaverse, online gaming, and cloud computing have higher throughput, lower latency, more concurrent sessions, higher security, higher availability, and higher energy saving requirements. The current Wi-Fi standards cannot address these requirements. To address these new challenges, the IEEE 802.11be EHT working group was established to develop the Wi-Fi 7 standard to optimize the current standards from network throughput, interference suppression, spectrum efficiency, and latency optimization. Wi-Fi 7, also called IEEE 802.11be, will be released in two versions. Release 1 Draft 1.3 has been completed, and will be released by the end of 2022. Release 2 is expected to be launched in 2022 and will be released by the end of 2024.