As Intel vigorously promotes their AX-200 / 201 network cards, and many mobile phone manufacturers have started to use chipsets that support Wi-Fi 6 , Wi-Fi 6 is a very fresh specification that was put a year ago Slowly began to walk into our lives. There is still a long way to go before it completely replaces 802.11ac as the mainstream Wi-Fi standard. Some curious students may ask questions. Since Wi-Fi 6 has begun to spread, is there any standard after it? In the making?
The answer to the question is yes, the pace of the new standard will never wait for the completion of the previous standard. The successor of Wi-Fi 6 , Wi-Fi 7 , has begun to enter the standard research and development process. In the current plan, its maximum rate will reach 30Gbps .
At present, the most likely to become Wi-Fi 7 is the IEEE 802.11be standard under development . It is Wi-Fi 6 , which is a direct relative of the 802.11ax standard. Compared with 802.11ax , it is expected to have the following improvements:
- Support more data streams and introduce CMU-MIMO
802.11ax supports up to 8 data streams, and a major improvement at the time was the introduction of MU-MIMO , which allowed multiple devices to use multiple data streams to communicate with the access point at the same time. 802.11be doubles this number, allowing the device to support a total of 16 data streams. Supporting more data streams will also bring more powerful features- CMU-MIMO , C stands for Coordinated , meaning that 16 data streams may not be provided by one access point, but by multiple access points Also provided.
CMU-MIMO is a new feature that caters to the current development direction of multiple access points in wireless networks. In recent years, in order to expand the coverage of Wi-Fi networks, people often use Mesh networking, which actually increases the number of access points. And CMU-MIMO can allow users to take advantage of the extra access point, the 16 th data stream to different access points while working.
- Introduce new 6GHz frequency band, three frequency bands work simultaneously
The 802.11ax standard uses both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and it has a small upgraded version, that is, the Wi-Fi 6E mentioned earlier introduces a new 6GHz band. 802.11be will continue to use this new frequency band, and strive to achieve the goal of using three frequency bands for communication at the same time, in order to obtain greater communication bandwidth to increase its own rate. It will also expand the width of the individual channel, from 802.11ax of 160MHz doubled to 320MHz .
Third, the signal modulation method is upgraded to 4096QAM , with a larger data capacity
Wireless technology will of course involve the modulation method of the signal. In 802.11ax , the standard uses 1024-QAM modulation, and 802.11be is expected to continue to upgrade the modulation method and use 4096-QAM directly , which will expand the transmission data capacity to the highest level. A foundation of 30Gbps is laid.
At present, the 802.11be character has not been left aside . All of the above are actually the features that are expected to be implemented. It is still unclear whether it can be completed when the standard is formulated, but it is still quite a while away from us. The Wi-Fi Alliance expects that it will complete the standard formulation in 2023 , and it may not be until 2025 until we actually use it .
