In the past few months, many suppliers have launched Wi Fi 7 (802.11be) products. Following mediatak and Broadcom, Qualcomm has also recently launched a series of Wi Fi 7 networking Pro products for 10Gbps AP.
At the beginning of this year, MediaTek demonstrated the filogic series chips compatible with 802.11be, but the specific details and product number were not announced in the event; Last month, Broadcom also launched a comprehensive Wi Fi 7 product lineup, detailing multiple 802.11be radios for access points, a network SOC supporting 802.11be bandwidth, and a client radio for mobile applications.
About Wi Fi 7 / 802.11be background
The 802.11 working group's focus on 802.11be has been on extremely high throughput. This is mainly achieved through the combination of three different aspects:
● support up to 16 spatial streams
● support channel width up to 320mhz (can operate in 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz frequency bands)
● support 4096-qam (4K -QAM), so as to make better use of the available spectrum (faster modulation / coding scheme).
※ it must be pointed out that only in 5GHz and 6GHz frequency bands can there be wider channels.
Theoretically, these aspects allow wireless throughput up to about 46 Gbps. 802.11be is also designed to enable Wi Fi for real-time applications by including low latency communication features such as multi link operation (MLO). This allows clients and access points to communicate simultaneously on multiple channels that may belong to different frequency bands.
The 802.11be specification also allows for better performance in heavily interfering environments and allows adaptive puncturing -- the required channels are not necessarily continuous. This improves the preamble puncture function that has been provided as part of the 802.11ax specification.
Automatic frequency coordination (AFC) is used to deal with interference and coexistence with non Wi Fi users in the same spectrum. Unlike the open AFC program, which Broadcom is part of, Qualcomm has chosen to provide its customers with its own key solutions.
On MWC 2022, Qualcomm provided details of their 802.11be client chip for mobile devices. Fastconnect 7800 is expected to be available in the second half of 2022 and integrates Bluetooth 5.3 support with key features of Wi Fi 7. Today, the company is launching its Wi Fi 7 networking Pro Series access point platform to expand its Wi Fi 7 product portfolio.
As early as 2019, Qualcomm began marketing its Wi Fi solutions under the names of networking pro and fastconnect, and launched Wi Fi 6 solutions. The second-generation products cater to the ecosystem of Wi Fi 6e. It is not surprising that today's third-generation products focus on Wi Fi 7.
From the perspective of end consumers, the introduction of networking Pro label has caused router / AP platform. Unlike Broadcom's public announcement of the core details of the network SOC and the characteristics of various radio options of its reference design, Qualcomm only provides these details to its customers. Ultimately, these details will indeed be made public after the product is launched.
For example, the details of networking Pro 800 platform can be found here - we see a core wisoc, which integrates Mac and baseband and and is equipped with independent radio. Therefore, it is disappointing that Qualcomm did not provide us with much analysis in today's announcement except for the basic product specifications. These high-level functional specifications match the product functions announced by Broadcom last month.
It must be noted that Qualcomm also provides an "immersive home" platform for entry-level Wi Fi routers. These platforms are usually similar to the 'networking Pro' platform, but reduce the number of spatial streams and wisoc capabilities in terms of CPU core number and frequency. Since Qualcomm refuses to provide any details on the number or frequency of CPU cores of the networking Pro Series launched today, we need to wait for an official announcement related to their Wi Fi 7 product portfolio for cost sensitive areas.
The third generation networking Pro series consists of four members, and the number of data streams ranges from 6 of networking Pro 620 to 16 of networking Pro 1620. In the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands, each band has the radio option of two or four data streams.
Qualcomm claims that the peak system PHY rate is up to 33gbps, the wireless PHY rate of each channel is more than 10Gbps, and each channel can support more than 500 users. The availability of 6GHz spectrum for Wi Fi is not universal. Qualcomm said that different configurations of the third generation of networking Pro Series are possible according to the distribution.
Qualcomm's Wi Fi 7 networking Pro family will allow its customers to create a wide range of enterprise and advanced wireless access points / routers. These platforms have begun to take samples - we should see the launch of be10000, be16000, be21000 and be33000 Wi Fi routers based on these platforms in a few quarters.