Wi-Fi 7, officially released in January 2024 under the IEEE 802.11be standard, represents a significant evolution in wireless networking. Designed to meet the growing demands of high-throughput, low-latency applications, the technology introduces a range of enhancements aimed at improving spectrum efficiency, reliability, and user experience—especially in environments with heavy traffic or latency-sensitive services. As such, this should enable Wi-Fi to better support the growing demand for video streaming, wireless gaming, Industrial IoT (Internet of Things) and ER (Extended Reality) etc. Furthermore, Wi-Fi 7 continues to support the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Passpoint framework, helping to enable more seamless and secure roaming between public and private networks, with ongoing efforts aimed at enhancing interoperability and reducing user friction during network transitions
At the core of Wi-Fi 7 is a push for extremely high throughput, with theoretical data rates reaching up to 46Gbps. This increase is enabled by support for 320MHz-wide channels, a doubling of the maximum channel bandwidth compared to earlier standards. These wider channels are particularly impactful in the 6GHz band, where cleaner spectrum allows for better real-world utilisation.
The introduction of 4096-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) further increases spectral efficiency by enabling more data to be encoded in each transmission, offering up to a 20% improvement over previous modulation schemes. Wi-Fi 7 also doubles the number of spatial streams in MU-MIMO configurations from 8 to 16, boosting aggregate throughput in multi-user environments.
Wi-Fi 7 incorporates several techniques to improve latency and determinism, drawing on concepts from Time Sensitive Networking (TSN). While full TSN compatibility is challenging in a wireless context, certain principles—such as time-aware scheduling—are being adapted to improve support for latency-critical services.
In parallel, refinements to Target Wake Time (TWT), specifically Restricted TWT, help optimise power consumption and scheduling efficiency, making Wi-Fi 7 more suitable for industrial IoT and mobile AR/VR deployments.
OFDMA was first introduced into Wi-Fi as part of the 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) standard as a more efficient means of allocating the available radio resources. Unfortunately, the actual mechanism supported by Wi-Fi 6 is insufficiently flexible in that it only permits a single RU (Resource Unit) of a pre-determined size to be scheduled towards a Wi-Fi station.
Wi-Fi 7 continues the use of OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) but with greater flexibility. Unlike previous implementations, the updated standard allows for multiple Resource Units (RUs) to be scheduled to a single client, enabling more efficient and dynamic use of bandwidth.
Another key improvement is expanded preamble puncturing, allowing devices to avoid narrow bands of interference within a wider channel. Wi-Fi 7 supports this across the entire 320MHz bandwidth with 20MHz granularity, reducing wasted spectrum and improving performance in congested environments.
One of the most transformative features of Wi-Fi 7 is Multi-Link Operation (MLO). This allows a device to simultaneously transmit and receive across multiple frequency bands—2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz—either for load balancing or to increase redundancy. The benefits are twofold: higher aggregate throughput and reduced latency, particularly in scenarios where a single band may be congested or prone to interference.
MLO also enables packet duplication, where the same data is sent over multiple links to reduce the risk of packet loss—critical for real-time applications like AR/VR or industrial control.
Although often discussed during the development of Wi-Fi 7, Multi-Access Point (Multi-AP) Coordination was ultimately not included in the final IEEE 802.11be specification. Nevertheless, it remains an active area of research and is widely regarded as a likely direction for future Wi-Fi evolution.
Proposed capabilities such as synchronised transmission schedules, coordinated beamforming, and potentially even distributed MIMO aim to reduce interference and improve efficiency in dense deployments. While these features are not part of the current standard, they may form part of future enhancements or be implemented through proprietary solutions by vendors ahead of broader standardisation.