A whitepaper created by MediaTek has revealed that “reliability” is the main focus of the upcoming Wi-Fi 8 standard, which is expected to arrive towards the end of 2027, replacing the existing Wi-Fi 7 protocol.
The Wi-Fi 8 standard may also integrate a technology called “mmWave” that could increase the bandwidth of wireless connections.
MediaTek’s 2024 whitepaper was surfaced by FlatpanelsHD this week, where the company said the intention is to commercialise Wi-Fi 8 technology as “Ultra High Reliability”, in contrast to the existing Wi-Fi 7 standard, which is termed “Extremely High Throughput”.
The WiFi 7 standard is only just rolling out now, so we won’t see any Wi-Fi 8-compatible products appear on the market for a while. Indeed, the whitepaper specifies that the standard won’t be published until late 2027, which could mean the first devices supporting it won’t appear until 2028.
As always, we can expect the new protocol to be backwards compatible with previous Wi-Fi standards, FlatpanelsHD said. The plan is to achieve “extremely high” reliability and stability through the use of new technologies that increase coordination between routers and devices, extend their range and reduce signal latency in comparison to the existing Wi-Fi 7.
One of the main innovations in terms of reliability is "Single Mobility Domains", which make it possible for devices to move between multiple access points without seeing any disruption. According to an additional report published by Qualcomm last month, this is likely to be beneficial in places such as large office complexes, airports and hospitals. It would also help improve performance at the edge, extending the outer limits of a signal’s reach.
Wi-Fi 8 will have benefits such as superior video streaming performance and cloud gaming experiences that are streamed over the web via services such as Xbox Cloud and Nvidia GeForce now. It could also pave the way for slicker virtual reality videos on devices such as the Apple Vision Pro headset. In addition, it may increase the practicality of connecting video devices such as set-top boxes wirelessly, instead of using HDMI cables.
The whitepaper also shows that there’s a focus on reducing power consumption of Wi-Fi devices.
However, the plans for the new Wi-Fi 8 standard have not yet been finalised, and there is a chance that some of the above capabilities may be removed, depending on how feasible they are to implement. The new specification may gain additional features too. For instance, the whitepaper talks about “coordinated Multi-AP”, which was originally planned for Wi-Fi 7. It’s a new protocol that makes it possible for multiple routers in the same mesh network to coordinate their traffic, improving speed and performance. That should result in better Wi-Fi speeds for households and offices with many different devices.
Another suggestion calls for the implementation of mmWave, which can potentially up Wi-Fi’s bandwidth to as much as 100 Gbps, although actual performance is unlikely to meet such a high bar.
MediaTek’s whitepaper notes that there are currently around 21.1 billion Wi-Fi devices being used in the world today, with around 269 billion of them already utilising the Wi-Fi 7 standard.
