WiFi 7: between Evolution and Revolution

Thomas Moser
Fakultät EMI
University of Applied Sciences
Offenburg, Germany
tmoser2@stud.hs-offenburg.de

I. I NTRODUCTION As the name would suggest, one goal of the new standard
is a big increase in throughput, bringing Gigabit-Ethernet
The WiFi Alliance and the IEEE Standards Association have
speeds to multiple devices in the home. Because the idea is
made many advances regarding the 802-standard for Wireless
to effectively take over from the 5G mobile network, whose
Local Area Networks (WLAN). IEEE 802.11 working groups
penetration will not be obvious inside buildings.
are already working on the successor of the WiFi 6 in the
WLAN ecosystem: WiFi 7. known as IEEE 802.11be. although
WiFi 6 is just beginning to be marketed. Future WiFi 7 aims to
reach speed of 30 GB/s for transmission of data. This article
introduces the next generation of WiFi. Although the new
standard will not arrive until 2023, it promises a revolution.
But the new standard simply wants to adapt to the needs for
bandwidth, throughput, high-speed communication.

II. T ECHNICAL ASPECTS

A. Name
Its technical name is currently WiFi 802.11be EHT for
Extremely High Throughput. The new IEEE standard will be
called WiFi 7 according to the new nomination of the WiFi
Alliance. The last three Wi-Fi engineering standards – IEEE
802.11n, 802.11ac, and 802.11ax – have been certified as
Wi-Fi 4, 5 and 6, respectively. So 802.11be will probably
receive the Wi-Fi 7 label. While WiFi 6 focused on capacity
and latency, its successor is expected to make a great leap
forward in terms of throughput.
Fig. 2. Logo of the WiFi7
B. Timeline
The following lines present what has been done so far. The
graph 1shows what will be done by 2024.
1) May 2019 - Atlanta, United States
• Approved TGbe Selection Procedure document
• Approved TGbe Timeline
• Elected/Appointed Task Group Officers
o 2 Vice Chairs, Secretary and Technical Editor
• Discussed 16 technical submissions

Fig. 1. Timeline of the 11be standardization process

2) July 2019 – Vienna, Austria
• Approved the following TG documents
o TGbe Channel Model document
o TGbe Functional Requirements
o Specification Framework for TGbe
• Discussed 22 technical submissions covering a wide
range of topics
o Multi-AP coordination, PHY, multi-link operation,
HARQ, and MIMO
• Held a joint session with IEEE802.1/TSN
o Intro to IEEE802.1 TSN, part of the picture for
TSN + Wireless
o TSN for .11 with potential extensions, and im-
proving WLAN reliability
3) September 2019 – Hanoi, Vietnam
• Approved the creation of two ad-hoc groups (MAC
and PHY)
o Held elections and confirmed the appointment of
2 ad-hoc chairs per ad-hoc group
• Discussed technical submissions covering a wide
range of topics
o Ran straw polls on 15 submissions that were
presented during the conference calls
o Completed presentations of submissions in back-
logged queue (past presentations)
o Discussed 13 new technical submissions on a
variety of topics
• Ran several motions for inclusion of preliminary
concepts to TGbe SFD
4) November 2019 – Kona, Hawaii
• Discussed 50 technical submissions covering a
range of topics
o PHY, MIMO, Multi-AP coordination,
o Multi-Link, Low Latency, MAC, etc.
• Approved a total of 35 motions for inclusion of
design concepts to the TGbe SFD
o Tone plan, PHY preamble design, SIG field(s)
content,
o Multi-link operation, preamble puncturing, MAC
functionalities, etc.
5) January 2020 – Irvine, California
• Discussed 80 technical submissions covering a
range of topics
o PHY, MIMO, Multi-AP coordination,
o Multi-link, low latency, power save, MAC, etc.
• Approved 60 motions for inclusion of design con-
cepts to the TGbe SFD
o PHY preamble design, SIG field(s) content, 16
spatial stream support, multi-link operation, power
save,
o Low latency/prioritized access, preamble
puncturing/multi-RU aggregation, etc.
• Approved to hold a MAC ad-hoc meeting in the
Bay Area, California, USA for the purpose of
discussing technical contributions on March 13th,
2020.
List of abreviations :
• PHY: physical layer
• HARQ : Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request
• TSN : Time-Sensitive Networking
• MIMO : Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
• MAC : Media Access Control
• SFD : Start Frame Delimiter = sequence which marks the
start of every frame
As we can see on Figure 1,it takes time to walk through
the different steps to have an amendment
Compared to the previous generation (WiFi 6, 802.11ax),
WiFi 7 is expected to support up to 30Gbps of throughput,
which is about three times faster than WiFi 6, and can exceed
twice the number of frequencies use.
The question is : Why do we need so incredible speed?
Because the development of sophisticated technologies such
as 8K Ultra High Quality Videos (with 7680x4320 pixels or
four times as many pixels as a 4K TV and 16 times as many
as a 1080p TV) and high resolution VR (Virtual Reality) or
AR (Augmented Reality), the throughput of traffic per person
will increase to hundreds of gigabytes.
That’s why the world need new ressources, more speed.
III. T ECHNOLOGY
This section is highly inspired by the section ”CANDIDATE
TECHNICAL FEATURES” of [8]
A. 320 MHz bandwidth [8]
Spectrum is the air that wireless networks breath, and
any new generation of radio technology always attempts to
leverage the usage of new spectrum bands, as they become
available. 802.11be is no exception, and following the initial
steps of 802.11ax, Wi-Fi stakeholders embrace the usage
of the 6 GHz band as an immediate approach to increase
Wi-Fi peak throughput, as shown in Fig. 2. In this regard,
discussions about the most efficient approaches to operate the
up to 1.2 GHz of potentially accessible unlicensed spectrum
between 5.925 and 7.125 GHz—which more than doubles
the available bandwidth in the 5 GHz band—are ongoing.
The adoption of 160MHz and 320MHz communication
bandwidth per AP in the 6 GHz band as mandatory and op-
tional features, respectively, seems a sensible choice, building
on 802.11ax, where 160MHz bandwidth per AP is already 2
It is important to note the 802.11be TG has not defined any
specific objectives in terms of latency and/or reliability so far,
and a more detailed analysis on this matter was carried out by
the real time application (RTA) TIG an option.
Moreover, a minimum channel size of 40 or even 80MHz
in the 6 GHz band also seems appropriate when compared to
the 20MHz one used in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, given the
focus on extremely high throughput.
While the benefits of using the 6 GHz band to enhance
peak and system throughputs are obvious, the usage of a
new band also opens up the opportunity for new networking
approaches. For example, there are on-going discussions on
whether 802.11be-compliant APs should i) always schedule
uplink transmissions in the 6 GHz band—thereby reducing the
time spent on channel contention—, and ii) have the capability
to request 802.11ax devices to vacate the 6 GHz band on
demand, to reinforce such coordinated access.
B. Multi-band/multi-channel aggregation and operation Fig. 4. An alternative potential benefit of using multiband operation is
reducing the transmission error by sending the duplicate data of one traffic
With the emergence of dual-radio STAs and tri-band APs stream over multiple bands.
capable of simultaneously operating at 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz, one
of the main objectives of 802.11be is to make a more efficient
use of these multiple bands and channels therein. We describe enables APs to spatially multiplex up to eight single-stream
four of the most appealing techniques being considered by devices in both downlink and uplink (5).
802.11be:
• Multi-band data aggregation. The aggregation of 5 and
6 GHz spectrum for data transmission or reception is a
feature fully aligned with 802.11be fundamental objective
of enhancing Wi-Fi’s peak throughput
• Simultaneous transmission and reception in different
bands/channels.
• Simultaneous transmission and reception in the same
channel.
• Data and control plane separation. 802.11be devices
with multi-band/multi-channel full duplex capabilities
also have the unprecedented opportunity of separating the
data and management planes (3 and 4)

Fig. 5. An illustration of multiaccesspoint coordination. STA: station.

Fig. 3. A potential benefit of using multiband operation is improving

throughput by allocating data of one traffic stream among multiple bands.

C. 16 spatial streams and multiple-input multiple-output

(MIMO) protocol enhancements
More antennas and better spatial multiplexing capabilities
have been consistently added to Wi-Fi APs over the years
to satisfy the stringent traffic demands generated by the
increasing number of devices with wireless connectivity. For
instance, 802.11ac APs can spatially multiplex up to eight
spatial streams and four devices—in a MU-MIMO fashion—in
a given downlink time/frequency resource, while 802.11ax
 IV. A PPLICATIONS R EFERENCES
[1] Anna Flockett, “WiFi 7: the next generation of WiFi technology”
According to The Next Web, the consortium is exploring September 2019
with IEEE 802 new improvements to the wireless standard,
[2] Toni Adame, Marc Carrascosa, and Boris Bellalta, ”Time-Sensitive
for vehicles but also for the home: engineers are indeed Networking in IEEE 802.11be: On the Way to Low-latency WiFi 7”,
thinking about making WiFi capable of detecting objects in 12th December 2019
space and movement.
[3] E. Khorov, I. Levitsky and I. F. Akyildiz, ”Current Status and Directions
of IEEE 802.11be, the Future Wi-Fi 7,” in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp.
A first application would thus be a new anti-collision 88664-88688, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2993448.
system for cars. But Paul Nikolich, chairman of the IEEE
[4] E. Au, ”IEEE 802.11be: Extremely High Throughput [Standards],” in
802 group involved in developing the standard, seems much IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 138-140,
more excited about the other possibility of 802.11be: ”We Sept. 2019, doi: 10.1109/MVT.2019.2920204.
want to detect people’s movements when they change rooms
[5] A. Artashyan ”WIFI 7 COMING, IT CAN REACH A SPEED OF
without sensors. The technology is also sensitive enough to 30GBPS!” https://www.gizchina.com/2020/04/26/wifi-7-coming-it-can-
detect your breathing rate because when you breathe you reach-a-speed-of-30gbps/
change the RF characteristics”.
[6] M. Yang, B. Li, Z. Yan and Y. Yan, ”AP Coordination and Full-duplex
enabled Multi-band Operation for the Next Generation WLAN: IEEE
The engineer continues: ”Imagine some of the applications. 802.11be (EHT),” 2019 11th International Conference on Wireless
I have a 93-year-old mother, and if I put a WiFi access point Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP), Xi’an, China, 2019,
pp. 1-7, doi: 10.1109/WCSP.2019.8928021.
with these capabilities in their home, I would be able to tell
if everything is okay or if she has had a fall. These possible [7] E. Avdotin, D. Bankov, E. Khorov and A. Lyakhov, ”Enabling Massive
use cases were probably not anticipated by the engineers Real-Time Applications in IEEE 802.11be Networks,” 2019 IEEE
30th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile
who were originally just looking for a new way to improve Radio Communications (PIMRC), Istanbul, Turkey, 2019, pp. 1-6, doi:
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with speeds in the gigabit range over an extended range.
[8] D. Lopez-Perez, A. Garcia-Rodriguez, L. Galati-Giordano, M. Kasslin
and K. Doppler, ”IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput: The
The new standard will also bring some enhancement in Next Generation of Wi-Fi Technology Beyond 802.11ax,” in IEEE
Communications Magazine, vol. 57, no. 9, pp. 113-119, September
the domain of the Real-Time APplication (RTA). A real-time 2019, doi: 10.1109/MCOM.001.1900338.
application (RTA) is an application program that functions
within a time frame that the user senses as immediate or
current. The latency must be less than a defined value (that’s
why the WiFi 7 is a good opportunity) usually measured in
seconds. Whether or not a given application qualifies as an
RTA depends on the worst-case execution time (WCET), the
maximum length of time a defined task or set of tasks requires
on a given hardware platform. The use of RTAs is called real-
time computing (RTC).
Examples of RTAs include:
• Videoconference applications
• VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol)
• Online gaming
• Community storage solutions
• Some e-commerce transactions
• Chatting
• IM (instant messaging)

V. C ONCLUSION

The 802.11be amendment is the next signifcant milestone in

the Wi-Fi long-term success story. Its core features are related
to provide extremely high throughput and support real-time
applications.
In this paper, we have presented a comprehensive overview
of the initial steps taken towards the creation and standardisa-
tion of 802.11be—the next generation Wi-Fi beyond 802.11ax.