Development steps that brought to Wi-Fi 7

Abstract

Wi-Fi networks are globally the dominant technology for Internet access in indoor areas and are key enablers of the digital economy. Their success is the result of constant work on novel technical solutions and standards in order to provide timely responses to user demands, defined through the emergence of new applications and services. Since the adoption of the first Wi-Fi standard in 1997, the Wi-Fi development path has come to work on standardization of the seventh generation (Wi-Fi 7) of these networks. In this paper, we provide an overview of the main technical characteristics of the first six generations of Wi-Fi networks, as well as the main solutions expected to be adopted in Wi-Fi 7. Moreover, by using the ns-3 simulator, we examined the efficiency of multi-link operation (MLO) for throughput enhancement in indoor scenarios, which is one of the most significant technical innovations proposed for the Wi-Fi 7 networks.