Five features under consideration for Wi-Fi 8

Wi-Fi 8 will be an incremental change rather than a completely new technical standard, but it will take reliability to the next level

Though certification for Wi-Fi 8, or 802.11bn, is not expected until 2028, vendors and standards bodies are already formulating plans around what Wi-Fi 8 will be and what features will be included. In the same way that Wi-Fi 7 has been dubbed Extremely High Throughput (EHT), Wi-Fi 8 is being called Ultra High Reliability (UHR) and is expected to be aimed at industrial applications.

“Wi-Fi 8, from what we understand pre-spec, is more of an incremental change rather than a completely new tech standard,” LitePoint’s Product Manager Khushboo Kalyani told RCR Wireless News. “Unlike previous generations that have almost always focused on higher throughput and user density, Wi-Fi 8 focuses on reliability and ensuring some level of determinism.” In fact, she pointed out that no new spectrum is being added for Wi-Fi 8 and nothing beyond 4096 QAM modulation is being considered, so in terms of throughput, we’re talking about the same theoretical throughput as Wi-Fi 7. 

That doesn’t mean, though, that Wi-Fi 8 doesn’t come with shiny new — or at least  enhanced — features. Here’s a few (pre-spec, of course):

1. Multi-Access Point Coordination—Multi-Access Point Coordination, or MAPC, which builds upon the network management improvements of previous generations of Wi-Fi like OFDMA and MLO, refers to the management of multiple access points in a wireless network to avoid interference and ensure efficient communication between the client devices and the network. Potential techniques include Coordinated Spatial Reuse (Co-SR), which will increase network capacity by allowing multiple APs to transmit simultaneously without causing significant interference; and coordinated beamforming to enhance signal quality and reduce interference through synchronized transmission strategies among APs.
2. Integrated mmWave—Some claim that the use of mmWave in Wi-Fi 8 will support data rates of up to 100 Gbps and will enable advanced use cases like virtual and augmented reality. In addition, mmWave is expected to improve the performance of Wi-Fi high-node density environments like stadiums and other large venues. mmWave will also address the lack of 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi in some countries and will be key for the development of integrated communications and sensing.
3. Ambient power communication—Within IEEE, there is a working group called the Ambient Power for WLAN IoT Topic Interest Group (AMP TIG) that is responsible for defining use cases for 802.11 ambient power-enabled IoT devices. Purva Rajkotia, who serves as the lead of IEEE SA’s Connectivity and Telecom Practice, described this feature to RCR Wireless News: “This particular technology is going to play a very important role because the whole idea of ambient power is that basically you are energy harvesting. So, if somebody is walking with a cell phone in their hand, and the hand is moving, energy is being generated by that motion. We want to use that energy to power or charge the device. The concept is that anywhere there is energy, in any form … we should be able to convert that … into a usable energy form. This will increase your energy efficiency.”
4. Distributed Resource Units (dRU)—This feature is designed specifically for low-power indoor (LPI) devices in the 6 GHz band and allows for distribution of allocated tones across a wider bandwidth, reducing the number of tones per MHz, boosting uplink OFDMA transmission power.
5. The integration of AI and Machine Learning—The use of AI/ML in Wi-Fi 8 is expected to enhance and improve connectivity.