Wi-Fi 7: the first compatible PCs will be launched by Intel in 2024
Intel will soon launch the Wi-Fi 7 (802.11b) protocol on the market, which will double the network connection speed compared to the previous generation, Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax).
After a first demonstration of Wi-Fi 7 by MediaTek at CES 2022 then the first compatible chips launched by Qualcomm in May, we now know when Wi-Fi 7 will arrive in our PCs. Indeed, ETNews reports that during a recent Asia-Pacific press conference, Eric MacLaughlin, vice president of wireless solutions for Intel, announced that the company will adopt the next generation of Wi-Fi 7 (or 802.11be) in laptops by 2024.
The company is currently developing the next-generation connectivity technology in order to obtain certification from the “Wi-Fi Alliance”, which intends to aim for speeds of up to 48 Gbps. The Intel employee also clarified that after rolling out to a few models in 2024, the company expects Wi-Fi 7 arrives massively on computers the following year, in 2025.
What does Wi-Fi 7 bring compared to Wi-Fi 6?
It has been now several years since Wi-Fi 6 appeared on our routers. A new, more advanced Wi-Fi 6E standard was deployed on a Bouygues Telecom box at the start of the year, and could therefore be the last before the arrival of Wi-Fi 7 in two years. As a reminder, Wi-Fi 6E supports 6 GHz spectrum, which offers a much wider bandwidth than previous Wi-Fi 6. It quadruples the number of waves available and brings the speed to 2.6 GB/s, compared to 2 GB/s for Wi-Fi 6.
On his side, Wi-Fi 7 will stabilize bandwidth at 6 GHz while delivering speeds of 5.8 Gbps. The Wi-Fi 7 standard will also be future-proof as it will be ready to accept an increase in bandwidth up to 7 GHz. On the bandwidth side, the Wi-Fi 7 almost doubles the frequency bandwidth from 802.11ax (170 MHz) to 320 MHz and doubles the speed of Wi-Fi said McLaughlin. ” As there is more than a year until the release of the 802.11be standard, there is still a chance that we can further improve the processing speed “.
Intel also predicts that the applications of Wi-Fi 7 will expand rapidly to video games, virtual reality, augmented reality and robots. We had even seen that Wi-Fi 7 could also detect the falls of elderly people.
Source : ETNews
