MediaTek fires the starting gun on WiFi 8
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MediaTek has early prototypes of chips for the next generation IEEE802.11bn WiFi 8 standard.
WiFi 7, or 802.11be, was approved in September, but chips have been available for the last two years. The four year cycle means that WiFi8 chips will be ready by the end of 2027, with early versions in 2026. That sees chip designers starting developments now with architectural developments.
MediaTek is part of the leadership of the P802.11bn working group chaired by Qualcomm, along with Intel and NXP. Huawei and Interdigital are also part of the group.
WiFi 8 is focussed on ultra high reliability (UHR) rather than higher data rates from the 23Gbit/s of WiFi 7, adding in features that were left out of WiFi 7 such as the coordination of access points, or coordination of special reuse (Co-SR) to boost the practical throughput by 25% and a 25% reduction in latency to make it more responsive.
MediaTek has implemented the Co-SR for the most popular Wi-Fi mesh system, one Control AP and one Agent AP. Preliminary trials show that Co-SR could increase the overall system throughput by 15% to 25%. With joint transmit power control and rate selection, this offers increased spectrum capacity say DW Tseng, General Manager of Connectivity Technology Development and Henry Chu, Senior Director of intelligent Connectivity Business.
Coordinated beamforming (Co-BF) blanks our other access points to minimise interference. IN the FIlogic chip this increases the range from 20% to 50% in a mesh network setup. This improvement in throughput is particularly valuable in environments where high data rates and efficient spectrum in crowded urban areas and retail with lots of access points.
MediaTek is also proposing new technologies for the standard.
Adding new Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCSs) can bridge the signal to noise ratio (SNR) requirements. The options of QPSK with a 2/3 coding rate, 16-QAM with a 2/3 coding rate, 256-QAM with a 2/3 coding rate and 16-QAM with a 5/6 coding rate could boost the data transmission by up to 30%.
These are aimed at the existing 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands with the same spectrum allocations as WiFi 7, rather than higher frequencies, says Mediatek.
“Efforts to improve Wi-Fi services that fall outside the scope of the 802.11bn standard. This includes, but is not limited to, topics such as Integrated millimetre wave (mmWave) and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML),” said Tseng and Chu.
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