While customers rivet their eyes on Wi-Fi 6, in the bowels of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group that creates Wi-Fi standards, the next generation Wi-Fi is being developed. At the very first sight, the new IEEE 802.11be amendment to the Wi-Fi standard is nothing but scaled 11ax with doubled bandwidth and the increased number of spatial streams, which together provide data rates as high as 40 Gbps. A bit deeper dive into the 802.11 activities reveals that 11be will support real-time applications. In reality, 11be introduces many more revolutionary changes to Wi-Fi, which will form a basement for further Wi-Fi evolution. Although by now (May 2020), the development process is at the very early phase without any draft specification, the analysis of the discussion in the 802.11 Working Group gives insights into the main innovations of 11be. In addition to the ones above, they include native multi-link operation, channel sounding optimization that opens the door for massive MIMO, advanced PHY and MAC techniques, the cooperation of various access points. The paper analyzes hundreds of features proposed for the new technology, focusing on the open problems that can be solved by the researchers who want to contribute to the development of 802.11be.

中文翻译：

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IEEE 802.11be 的现状和方向，未来的 Wi-Fi 7


当客户关注 Wi-Fi 6 时，创建 Wi-Fi 标准的 IEEE 802.11 工作组正在开发下一代 Wi-Fi。乍一看，Wi-Fi 标准的新 IEEE 802.11be 修正案不过是扩展的 11ax，带宽加倍，空间流数量增加，共同提供高达 40 Gbps 的数据速率。更深入地研究 802.11 活动表明 11be 将支持实时应用程序。事实上，11be 为 Wi-Fi 带来了更多革命性的变化，这将为 Wi-Fi 的进一步发展奠定基础。尽管到目前为止（2020 年 5 月），开发过程还处于早期阶段，没有任何规范草案，但对 802.11 工作组讨论的分析可以让我们深入了解 11be 的主要创新。除了上述内容之外，它们还包括本机多链路操作、为大规模 MIMO 打开大门的信道探测优化、先进的 PHY 和 MAC 技术以及各种接入点的协作。本文分析了为新技术提出的数百个功能，重点关注那些希望为 802.11be 的发展做出贡献的研究人员可以解决的开放性问题。