WiFi 7 in China: What's the Point of Huawei's Router?

Unveiling the Key Technologies of WiFi7:320Mhz Bandwidth is the Core! Beyond the limitations of the 6Ghz frequency band, explore the broadband, technology, QAM and data flow of WiFi7, and usher in a new era of high-speed networks.

Rather than saying that the 6Ghz band is important for Wifi7, it is more accurate to say that the 320Mhz bandwidth is crucial for it.

To be precise, the Chinese mainland has not approved the use of the entire 6Ghz frequency band for civilian wifi communication. This does not mean that we cannot use wifi7 (nor does it mean that we definitely do not have a complete 320Mhz bandwidth). Let's talk about two aspects. First, it's not so much that the 6Ghz frequency band is important for Wifi7 as that the 320Mhz bandwidth is. Second, wifi7 technology is not limited to 320Mhz bandwidth.

All kinds of technologies and indicators have an impact on network speed, but relatively speaking, the most influential factor is still bandwidth. The core reason why the 2.4G frequency band cannot run fast is that its bandwidth is only 40Mhz. Why isn't there a higher bandwidth? It is because the frequency of the 2.4g band used for civilian wifi is only the 60M resource of 2412-2472Mhz, so it is impossible to have a data stream with an 80M bandwidth. However, for the high-frequency part of 5g (the 5.8g frequency band), there is only a data stream with a bandwidth of 80M and no data stream with a bandwidth of 160M. This is because the frequency of the 5.8g frequency band used for civilian wifi in China is 5725-5850MHz, with a total of 125M resources. Therefore, it is impossible to have a data stream with a bandwidth of 160M. All these are determined by international or domestic radio standards and regulations, and are not purely technical issues.

The influence of other factors on network speed, for instance, QAM.

What is QAM? QAM is the abbreviation of Quadrature Amplitude Modulation, which means "Quadrature Amplitude Modulation". It is a modulation method that can be understood as a technology for converting data signals into electromagnetic wave signals. There are only two waveforms for 1 and 0: one is prominent and the other is not (which can be understood as having electromagnetic waves and not having electromagnetic waves). There are only two types of waveforms in 1QAM. Each waveform either represents 0 or 1, so the information contained in each waveform is 1bit. 4QAM is a total of four waveforms, each of which can represent one of 00, 01, 11, or 10. Therefore, each waveform contains 2 bits of information. For instance, the decimal number 10 is converted to binary as 1010. If 1QAM is used for modulation, four electromagnetic waves need to be emitted, namely 1, 0, 1, and 0. If 4QAM is modulated, only two power transmissions are needed, which are 10 and 10 respectively. Efficiency has been doubled. By analogy, there are 4QAM, 16QAM, 64QAM, 256QAM, 1024QAM and 4096QAM, etc. One modulation symbol can respectively transmit 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 bits of information. Note that since binary data is composed of 1s and 0s, each time QAM is increased, 2 more bits of information are sent compared to the previous generation, and the amount of additional data sent is increased by 2 to the power of 2. That is to say, we see 1QAM, 4QAM, 16QAM, 64QAM, 256QAM, 1024QAM and 4096QAM. And for each generation of improvement, the amount of information sent at a single time increases by 2 bits, that is, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 bits are sent. This data transmission volume They respectively correspond one-to-one with the above-mentioned QAM. In this way, we can answer the question: How much faster is 4096QAM compared to 1024QAM? Let's take a look. 4096QAM sends 12 bits at a time, while 1024QAM sends 10 bits at a time. Therefore, 4096QAM is 20% higher than 1024QAM.

From wifi6 to wifi6E and wifi7, the modulation has increased from 1024QAM to 4096QAM. It seems to be a "fourfold" relationship, but the network speed can only be increased by up to 20% at most. The real increase in speed actually depends on the improvement of bandwidth, that is, "widening the road". If the bandwidth can be increased from 160M to 320M, even if other technologies do not progress, the network speed can still double.

wifi7 technology is not limited to a 320Mhz bandwidth

Although 320Mhz bandwidth is important and we hope to have it, it is not the entirety of wifi7, just as 160Mhz bandwidth is not the entirety of wifi6. wifi7 also features technologies such as 4K QAM, MLO, MRU, and 16MU-MIMO. Among them, the influence of MLO (Multi-Link Operation, multi-link aggregation) technology on the improvement of network speed is also very important. It can achieve the link aggregation of 2.4G+5G and 5G+5G, which is equivalent to connecting two "non-adjacent lanes" and also equivalent to achieving higher bandwidth.