Qualcomm Announce First Wi-Fi 7 Solutions, Twice as Fast as Wi-Fi 6

Qualcomm has officially presented its first Wi-Fi 7 solutions. The novelty promises a revolutionary performance and incredibly low latencies.

The company says it expects a new class of systems for today’s applications and the emerging Wi-Fi 7 ecosystem. Some of the highlights of the new technology are more simultaneous operations from multiple links, 4K QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation ), quad-band configurations, and of course more speed. To be more precise, Wi-Fi 7 offers 2 times the theoretical speed of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-FI 6E.

Each generation of Qualcomm Networking Pro Series platforms has introduced next-generation Wi-Fi 6, 6E and 7 capabilities. With samples now available to partners, Networking Pro Series Gen 3 is the highest performing commercial Wi-Fi 7 infrastructure network on the market. Enables systems with aggregated wireless capacity of up to 33 Gbps, point-to-point connections of more than 10 Gbps, tri-band and quad-band configurations that allow the user to have Wi-Fi connectivity in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum bands, and 6 GHz, and Multi-user traffic management.

Another highlight is the 320MHz channels, those that deliver double the transfer rate of Wi-Fi 6, as mentioned.

In theory, Wi-Fi 7’s new 320 MHz channels on the 6 GHz frequency offer a significant speed advantage over Wi-Fi 6 and its seven 160 MHz channels. For gamers, the popularization of Wi-Fi 7 It will provide a better online gaming experience without the need for a wired connection.

According to Qualcomm, the third-generation Networking Pro Series platforms will for the first time enable more than 10 Gbps of backhaul for enterprise and home Wi-Fi mesh systems.

The complete list of Qualcomm Networking Pro Gen 3 Series platforms:

• Qualcomm Networking Pro 1620: Quad-band, 16 streams, 33.1 Gbps max wireless capacity for stadiums, large enterprises, and premium home systems.
• Pro 1220: 22.6 Gbps, tri-band, 12-stream max wireless capacity for enterprise, SMB, prosumer, and premium home systems.
• Pro 820: Quad-band, 8 streams, 13.7 Gbps max wireless capacity for enterprise, SMB, prosumer and premium home systems.
• Qualcomm Networking Pro 620: Maximum 10.8 Gbps, 6-stream, tri-band wireless capacity for enterprise, SMB, gaming, and home mesh systems.

When combined with Wi-Fi 7 solutions such as the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800, Networking Pro Series Gen3 can support Multi-Link High Band Simultaneous (HBS), which leverages the high-speed 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands simultaneously to deliver “best throughput and latency multilink performance“. According to Qualcomm, the FastConnect 7800 is the new world’s most advanced Wi-Fi + Bluetooth connectivity systemwith a theoretical maximum speed reaching 5.8 Gbps.

Wi-Fi 7, twice as fast as Wi-Fi 6

“With a massive increase in high-performance devices, stable connections, and a new and broader spectrum available to serve them, Wi-Fi 7 is dedicated to the task of increasing performance, specifically, for ultra-low latency, extremely high throughput, and greater capacity through more efficient use of the spectrum,” says Qualcomm.

Of course, it must be taken into account that solutions with Wi-Fi 7 in general should be arriving in time, closing in 2023. According to trend studies, 2022 would continue to be the year of the consolidation of Wi-Fi 6E, leaving Wi-Fi 7 to start taking a firm shape in late 2023 or early 2024. It’s also worth remembering that we need hardware compatible with the technology to start using it. The FastConnect 7800 we mentioned earlier is expected to launch in the second half of this year as the first solution to offer Wi-Fi 7 commercially.