Today, almost everyone in the world is using Wi-Fi for connecting their devices for smooth and easy go wireless connections. With the explosion of smart devices, it has become common for most homes to have a set up for 4K streaming, gaming and IoT. In addition, the pandemic brought about an increase in the internet appetite of a family due to work from home for adults and online classes for children became the new normal.
With increasing load and demand in using wireless connections we also see challenges related to latency, throughput, reliability and QoS.
There has been a natural evolution in Wi-Fi systems over the years and most of it is geared towards catering to the burgeoning demand that has arisen over the last decade. What started with IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b, 802,11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac has moved towards IEEE 802.11ax or also known as Wi-Fi 6 capability which is synonymous with providing faster speed, greater bandwidth, lesser network congestion and reduced power consumption thus providing users with highly efficient Wi-Fi connections. As is often the case, a newer, better version is always around the corner and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 will have much more to offer.
What does Wi-Fi 7 entail?
To improve Wi-Fi capability for a changing world, IEEE have come up with 802.11be which would also be termed as Wi-Fi 7. Intel predicts that Wi-Fi 7 would be five times faster (data rate) than Wi-Fi 6. With concepts like ‘multi-link operation’ (MLO) where devices can operate with multiple channels at the same time, multiple AP, 6 GHz band, 320 MHz channel bandwidth, 4096-QAM, 16 spatial streams thus reducing wait time, increase in data transfer rate which boosts speed while reducing latency.
The main feature of Wi-Fi 7 is the ‘multi-link operation’ (MLO) which allows two or more channels to be aggregated from 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands and even within the same band thus increasing the throughput and QoS. This feature also provides asynchronous and synchronous mode on the aggregated channels thus allowing operations across multiple channels simultaneously with single and multiple radio configurations.
Another interesting feature is ‘puncturing’ that allows data to be transmitted through bonding channels by puncturing the preamble. Bonding the primary channel with non-contagious secondary channels results in increased bandwidth while also avoiding transmitting data through already loaded channels and on DFS channels which are used for radar operations. Preamble puncturing applies only to 80 and 160 MHz channels.
Multi-AP feature would be achieved by co-ordination with multiple shared APs to achieve the desired network performance goals.
With the usage of 6 GHz band, we would be able to get channels bandwidth up to 320 MHz whereas a 5 GHz band restricts it to 160 MHz and a 2.4 GHz band can only generate up to 20 MHz.
Role of the Wi-Fi Alliance in driving growth and adoption
Wi-Fi 7 is still under development and is expected to be available for use only by 2024. However, there’s also a lot of traction in the Wi-Fi open-source community (Wi-Fi alliance) where the objective is to connect everyone, everything and everywhere. The Wi-Fi alliance helps in driving global Wi-Fi adoption through development of innovative technologies, requirements, and test programs to ensure Wi-Fi provides users the interoperability, security and reliability which is expected as per industry needs. As per Wi-Fi alliance, global economic value of Wi-Fi is expected to reach $5 trillion USD by 2025 and billions of devices shipped every year.
Conceptualizing New Testing Approaches for Wi-Fi 6 & 7
With this kind of rapid evolution taking place on both the vendor and non-vendor sides of the industry, there’s a need to come up with new testing methodologies which help in validating the systems and the network (Wi-Fi) as a whole rather than using traditional testing approaches.
Provided below are the factors to be considered while conceptualizing Test approaches specifically for Wi-Fi 6 and 7 testing:
- OFDMA and MU-MIMO-Uplink/Downlink Tests for 8(Wi-Fi 6) and 16(Wi-Fi 7) spatial steams to check for bandwidth and send-receive capacity between the AP and devices
- QAM symbols exchanges to be tested – 1024 (Wi-Fi 6) and 4096 (Wi-Fi 7)
- Speed tests to check data rates of 10Gbps and (Wi-Fi 6) 46Gbps (Wi-Fi 7)
- MLO and puncture tests for Wi-Fi 7
- Band Steering Tests (Radio change)
- Wi-Fi area coverage tests and Wi-Fi interference tests
- Channel width tests and device interoperability tests
- Security tests
Happiest Minds’ Offering:
We at Happiest Minds have created test offerings keeping in mind the unique requirements of the new Wi-Fi standards. These include –
- QE Servicecovering Functional Test, System Test and Performance Test for WiFi Access Points, Wifi Gateways/routers, and associated Network Management platforms.
- Test Automation Framework Design, Test scripting and Accelerators using Opensource SW, FrW, Libraries supporting BDD, TDD and ATDD.
- End-to-End Testing services covering WiFi routers, Gateways, Applications and Cloud platforms.
What lies ahead with Wi-Fi 7 and beyond
Several use cases across different industries and emerging countries require the connected ecosystem to function smoothly with limited bandwidth while providing low latency. Wi-Fi has always been continuously evolving to meet the changing needs and appetites of the marketplace and there are plans already afoot for the next version which is called IEEE 802.11bf. This version specifically is intended to have solutions for low latency devices in IoT, AR, VR amongst other areas with features like Wi-Fi Sensing and Open Roaming where Wi-Fi capable clients can connect to available hotspots without having to connect and login.
The future is exciting and the newer manifestations of Wi-Fi will keep all the players in the ecosystem on their toes to extract its full potential.
is a Senior Test Lead at Happiest Minds with the Network Testing group. She has over a decade of hands-on experience in testing telecom, networking, and embedded devices as well as cloud and web-based apps.
Sneha’s expertise is in delivering quality tested products and solutions to clients across varied domains such as networking, telecom, retail and Industrial IoT.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Engineering from VTU, Belgaum.
