Qualcomm Intends To Send Those Bits Flying
We don’t expect to see any WiFi 7 kit this year, the launch is still expected some time in 2023 but the good news is that Qualcomm is now shipping their third generation of Networking Pro silicon is shipping to OEM customers. That gives them plenty of time to build their own WiFi 7 kit and ready it to ship to customers.
There will be a variety of products, such as the premium Networking Pro 1620 which is quad-band, 16-stream, and can provide an aggregated peak of 33.1Gbps. A bit lower down will be the Networking Pro 1220 which is trimmed down to tri-band, 12-stream, and 21.6Gbps aggregate peak capacity. The Networking Pro 820 should be a little more affordable, it jumps back to quad-band, but only features 8-stream, and 13.7Gbps peak with the final product being the Networking Pro 620 with Tri-band, 6-stream, and a total of 10.8Gbps peak wireless capacity.
They have managed this by doubling the channel bandwidth to 320MHz and capable of can operate in 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bandwidths. WiFi 7 also learned a new trick from ethernet, and is able to simulate channel bonding to allow a device to make use of more than one channel if it is available, and the device knows how. Learn more about this, and the argument over the existence of WiFi6e here.
