CTS236: 802.11be – The Future of Wi-Fi

In this week’s episode, we talk about the future of Wi-Fi following up on the publication of the following document from the IEEE: Current Status and Directions of IEEE 802.11be, the Future Wi-Fi 7 (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9090146) The authors of this document are: Evgeny Khorov, Ilya Levitsky and Ian F. Akyildiz IEEE 802.11be has been named EHT (Extremely High Throughput) by the IEEE. Here are the key features we could expect from it: * 4096 QAM* 320 MHz wide channels* MU-MIMO-16 spatial stream* Time-sensitive networking* Multi-link operation* Implicit sounding* Distributed MU-MIMO Here is the expected timeline for the development of the new amendment. First draft expected to be released in May 2021. The first release of 802.11be may include the following features: * 320Mhz wide channel* 4K-QAM* Obvious OFDMA improvements* Multi-Link This table summarized the main innovation of 802.11be and categorize them: On top of listening to this episode, we would recommend reading over the document. You will learn something new for sure! Enjoy!