Wi-Fi 8 will be a step change in connectivity, if Intel can be believed, and will be able to adapt intelligently to local conditions to deliver a reliable service without the slowdowns users often experience when the network is congested.

The next-gen release of Wi-Fi is not expected to be available in devices for a couple of years, but the industry seems determined that it will fix the issues that meant previous releases did not always live up to user expectations.

"The focus of Wi-Fi has always been on: how can we make it faster? You’ll see that with Wi-Fi 8, that’s going to change a little bit," said Intel Fellow and wireless chief technology officer Carlos Cordeiro.

This means that the upcoming standard will not increase the peak theoretical data rate and will not introduce wider channels, or higher order modulations compared with Wi-Fi 7. Instead, the new capabilities will be subtler.

"What you’re going to see is that we can get better rate at a given range. What I mean by that is, if you take an access point (AP) and a Wi-Fi 7 device, and you get a given data rate, then you replace that with a Wi-Fi 8 device, you’ll be able to get a higher data rate at that same location, at that same range."

Cordeiro says that Intel sees Wi-Fi 8 as the "connective technology for the AI era," one where in the not-too-distant future, everyone will have massive amounts of compute and storage available to them over the network, and this means that you can’t allow the wireless connection to become the bottleneck to accessing all those resources.

"So you really need high performance, which you know, Wi-Fi largely already is. But we need to make it more reliable. We need to make it more low latency. We need to make it, you know, more intelligent," he explained.

This means making devices and the network kit more context-aware, able to predict user needs, and adapt to them.

Cordeiro highlighted use cases that illustrate the challenges Wi-Fi 8 is aiming to address for users.

The first one is operating on a campus network, such as a university or corporate office site. Here, roaming and co-existence are key capabilities, but it currently can take tens of milliseconds for roaming from one AP to another to happen.

"So we took a very conscious effort in Wi-Fi 8 to define something we call seamless roaming, where we’re going to push down to the Wi-Fi technology a lot of the key negotiations and preparation for roaming, so that we can get it into single-digit low milliseconds, and do that with zero packet loss, right? So that if you’re doing Wi-Fi calling, you can move from one AP to the other, and you won’t notice the switch."

In a home environment, you might have someone on a conference call, someone else playing a game and another person watching a Netflix video. In situations like this, where there is a mix of traffic, you have to be able to prioritize, Cordeiro says, and so Wi-Fi 8 will have much better capabilities around quality of service, to be able to indicate low latency traffic and allow the network to prioritize it.

"How can we deal with the fact that some devices are very high-end, some devices are very low-end, but they are in the same network, and you want to make sure that those low-end devices don’t clog the channel, that everybody can get access and make better use of the spectrum," he explained.

This is also an area of focus in crowded office environments, where interference management and longer device battery life are desirable.

Another technology being developed with Wi-Fi 8 is the ability to sense the environment using the radio waves emitted by the devices.

"We expect to see Wi-Fi devices able to detect the distance to other devices that are nearby, not only the distance, but what is the direction to those devices, with the ability to become a sensor to detect distance, to detect the presence of people, to detect gestures," Cordeiro claimed.

"Essentially what we are doing is that we’re going to be able to make devices be context aware, aware of their surroundings, and that’s going to enable and open up the ability for new applications to be developed," he added.

One such scenario Cordeiro suggests is one where a user is in an online meeting on their laptop, and gets up and walks away holding their phone.

"Automatically, the laptop and the phone will realize that they are moving away from each other, and this Teams session could transfer to my phone. I don’t have to do anything automatically. I move away, the Teams session goes to my phone, and then when I come back to my PC, the Teams session automatically transfers back to the PC," he explained.

Others include waking up your PC when you approach it, or having it automatically lock itself if you walk away, or even detecting and acting on gestures, such as swiping to move to the next slide in a presentation.

In an Intel White Paper on Wi-Fi 8, the company lists some of the enhancements that aim to deliver these capabilities. Link reliability and performance will be improved through smarter use of modulation and coding schemes (MCS), for example.

Currently, if a device supports multiple spatial streams (MIMO), all streams use the same coding scheme. Wi-Fi 8 changes this so each stream can use the best possible encoding for its conditions, meaning that if one stream has a weaker signal, it can send data in a more robust way while other streams use an MCS optimized for speed.

Wi-Fi 8 adds more intermediate modulation steps, which means that medium signal strength users should see a better data rate than with Wi-Fi 7, who may have to choose a less optimal modulation.

It also promises better error correction via low-density parity check (LDPC) codewords that are double the length of those in Wi-Fi 7, meaning fewer retransmissions and a connection that can extend further.

Multiple access points will also be able to work together to optimize transmissions, making sure they do not transmit at the same time on the same channel, for example. With an enterprise network, two APs might take turns millisecond by millisecond, which avoids collisions, and devices therefore waste less time waiting and retrying.

Giving better access for critical applications will come via an enhanced version of EDCA (Enhanced Distributed Channel Access) called Prioritized EDCA. Under this, if a device marks traffic as high priority (like video), the network will let those packets through first even in crowded conditions, Intel says.

Security is also being stepped up in Wi-Fi 8 with encryption for control frames, which prevents spoofing attacks such as fake disconnect messages. Support for IEEE P802.11bi will extend protection to the association process and other management frames that were previously exposed, providing stronger encryption for Wi-Fi handshakes and improving privacy.

As previously noted, Wi-Fi 8 will build on the basic specifications of Wi-Fi 7, which is still being gradually adopted in new devices and access points / wireless routers. This means that it will be capable of operating in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands of the wireless spectrum, and uses 320 MHz channel bandwidth, double that of previous releases.

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According to Intel, it will be backwards compatible, in the sense that Wi-Fi 5/6/7 devices will work with Wi-Fi 8 APs (and vice versa), just without the benefits of the new capabilities.

Chipmaker Broadcom recently announced a portfolio of Wi-Fi 8 silicon, but Cordeiro said Intel was holding off until the availability of certification, because certification guarantees a minimal level of interoperability.

"We want to avoid any problems in the market. We want to make sure that clients and access points from various vendors work seamlessly, and so in our case, we do expect to have solutions once certifications are in place," he said.

Intel’s pitch for Wi-Fi 8 is that it will "just feel better," taking the raw speed of Wi-Fi 7 and adding intelligence to deliver that speed consistently, keeping latency-sensitive apps running without hiccups. The proof of the pudding, of course, will be in the eating. ®