Spectrum Needs of Wi-Fi 7

Availability of new spectrum resources in the 6 GHz band has provided a long sought, much-needed boost for Wi-Fi. In some leading countries, new access to this spectrum empowers Wi-Fi 6 and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 to take advantage of the technological advancements brought about by the standards, including the implementation of multiple 320 MHz channels, which have not previously been available. Wi-Fi 7 will be able to utilize large 320 MHz channels to allow users to benefit from new and emerging applications that extend well beyond traditional Internet connectivity. These applications have stringent requirements, some of which were not readily attainable with previous generations of Wi-Fi. In this paper, the impact of spectrum availability on the performance of demanding Wi-Fi deployment scenarios is analyzed by assessing Key Performance Indicators (KPI) as the number of available 320 MHz channels is varied from one to three.