Time to read: 4 minutes 10 seconds | Published: April 29, 2025
What is Wi-Fi 8?
Wi-Fi 8, also known as IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability, is the upcoming wireless standard that aims to provide significant advancements in enterprise networking, IoT, and consumer applications. The focus of this next-generation standard is on enhancing user experience through reliability rather than merely increasing speed. It is designed to complement cellular networks for seamless internet access and aims to improve communication through coordination of multiple access points and optimizing network throughput with better spectrum utilization. Wi-Fi 8 is expected to become available within a few years.
What are the key features of Wi-Fi 8?
Wi-Fi 8 aims to enhance effective and reliable wireless connectivity with key features such as:
- Multi-AP coordination: Enhances collaboration between multiple access points to optimize spectrum usage, improve coverage, and reduce interference. Coordinated Beamforming (Co-BF) enables multiple Access Points (APs) to work together in directing wireless signals toward target Stations (STAs). Coordinated Spatial Reuse (Co-SR) enables adjustment of transmit power for parallel transmission.
- Smarter power management: Allows APs to dynamically scale down capabilities like spatial streams, bandwidth, and transmission power to conserve energy.
- Advanced spectrum utilization: Optimizes spectrum allocation to improve performance across various client capabilities. Dynamic Sub-channel Operation DSO/ Non-Primary Channel Access NPCA optimizes performance when there is a disparity in the channel bandwidths among devices.
- Seamless connectivity and long-range performance: Enhances network reliability and roaming in enterprise and high-density deployments with optimized transmission techniques including an improved Seamless Roaming mode and Enhanced Long Range (ELR) for more reliable, extended coverage.
- Lower latency and better QoS: Refines Quality of Service to enhance performance for latency-sensitive applications with Enhanced or High-Priority EDCA (HIP EDCA) that aims to reduce the tail access delay of low-latency (LL) traffic in dense multi-BSS environments.
- In-device coexistence: Improves coexistence with other wireless technologies, with non-AP stations (STAs) able to report unavailability, allowing better coordination with other RF technologies like Bluetooth, reducing interference.
What are the benefits of Wi-Fi 8?
Wi-Fi 8 offers numerous benefits that significantly enhance the Wi-Fi experience:
| Feature | Benefits |
|---|---|
| Improved spectrum efficiency and coverage | Multi-AP coordination maximizes the use of available spectrum, providing better coverage and reducing interference, leading to a more stable and reliable connection |
| Enhanced power saving mechanisms | Advanced power management features conserve energy, making Wi-Fi 8 more sustainable and efficient, reducing operational costs |
| Optimized performance for various client capabilities | Advanced spectrum utilization ensures optimal performance across a range of devices, improving overall network experience |
| Stable connections over larger areas | Enhanced long-range performance provides reliable connectivity and smooth handovers, ideal for large spaces and high-mobility environments |
| Enhanced long-range performance provides reliable connectivity and smooth handovers, ideal for large spaces and high-mobility environments | Refined quality of service (QoS) enhances performance for applications that require low latency, such as gaming and video conferencing |
| Reduced interference | Improved coexistence with other wireless technologies, like Bluetooth, ensures smoother operation of multiple devices without interference |
What are the differences between Wi-Fi 8 and Wi-Fi 7?
Wi-Fi 8 will introduce several new features and enhancements over Wi-Fi 7:
- Multi-AP coordination: Wi-Fi 8 enhances collaboration between multiple access points, while Wi-Fi 7 focuses on Multi-Link Operation (MLO).
- Power management: Wi-Fi 8 introduces advanced power-saving mechanisms, whereas Wi-Fi 7 improved power efficiency with features like Restricted Target Wake Time (R-TWT), which is a scheduling mechanism that reduces latency and enhances reliability by imposing stricter control over transmission access, ensuring that scheduled service periods remain undisrupted.
- Spectrum utilization: Wi-Fi 8 optimizes spectrum allocation dynamically, while Wi-Fi 7 introduced ultra-wide 320 MHz channels and spectrum puncturing.
- Connectivity and performance: Wi-Fi 8 enhances seamless roaming and long-range performance, compared to Wi-Fi 7’s focus on high bandwidth and low latency.
- Quality of Service: Wi-Fi 8 enhances Quality of Service (QoS) through High Priority Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (HIP EDCA), which optimizes the ability of high-priority packets, such as audio packets, to access the channel, particularly in scenarios with extensive audio usage over Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 7 improved QoS through features like Stream Classification Service (SCS) that prioritizes latency sensitive applications and Restricted Target Wait Time (R-TWT) described above.
- Coexistence: Wi-Fi 8 improves in-device coexistence with technologies like Bluetooth, building upon Wi-Fi 7's coexistence improvements.
Use cases and applications of Wi-Fi 8
The Wi-Fi 8 standard promises advancements with the potential for higher effective speeds, lower latency, and more robust communications in increasingly crowded and diverse wireless environments. Because this future standard is expected to prioritize reliability as a main objective, ideal use cases will include Wi-Fi services and applications that require very low latency, highly reliable connectivity and high-density environments.
Potential use cases include extended reality (XR), industrial automation, e-Health, and high-density public venues. As the standard continues to be defined and benefits derived, more use cases are expected as the demand for better Wi-Fi is here to stay.
Wi-Fi 8 in enterprise environments
Wi-Fi 8's enhancements in multi-AP coordination, power management, spectrum utilization, connectivity, and QoS will significantly improve enterprise networking. It will support high-density deployments, provide stable connections, reduce latency, and enable efficient use of the available spectrum.
What is a comparison of the Wi-Fi generations?
| Feature | Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) | Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) | Wi-Fi 6/6E (802.11ax) | Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) | Wi-Fi 8 (802.11bn) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum channel bandwidth | 40 MHz | 160 MHz | 160 MHz | 320 MHz | 320 MHz |
| Frequency bands (GHz) | 2.4 and 5 GHz | 5 GHz | 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz | 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz | 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz |
| Modulation | 64 QAM | 256 QAM | 1024 QAM | 4096 QAM | 4096 QAM |
| Spatial streams | 4 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| MU-MIMO | - | DL only | UL and DL | UL and DL | UL and DL |
| Target Wait Time | - | - | Individual, broadcast | Restricted | Coordinated |
| OFDMA (RU per STA) | - | - | Yes (single) | Yes (multiple) | Yes (multiple) |
| Multi-link Operation (MLO) | - | - | - | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-AP coordination | - | - | - | - | Yes |
| DSO/ NPCA | - | - | - | - | Yes |
