Targeting high-end consumer and industrial applications the RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP leverages the advanced features of the IEEE 802.11be standard to deliver a high performance, cost- and power-optimised Wi-Fi solution for integration into the next wave of Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) and Station (STA) products.
According to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, annual Wi-Fi enabled chipset shipments will exceed 5.1 billion by 2028, with more than 1.7 billion of these chipsets supporting the Wi-Fi 7 standard.
As Wi-Fi enabled device shipments continue to grow, increasing numbers of semiconductor companies and OEMs are looking to integrate Wi-Fi connectivity into their chip designs, and need access to Wi-Fi IP to reduce the development costs and risks.
Ceva has reported more than 40 licensees for its RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 IP family, which serves a wide range of end markets and applications, from end points to access points, across the IoT sphere. According to Ceva its RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP provides a comprehensive 802.11be MAC and PHY solution for integration into the next generation of Wi-Fi SoC products.
Andrew Zignani, Senior Research Director, ABI Research, commented, “Ceva's wireless connectivity IPs play an integral role in the proliferation of connectivity standards in the broad IoT markets, as is evident from their customer’s success in shipping more than 1 billion connectivity chips annually.”
Tal Shalev, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT BU at Ceva, added, “The relentless expansion of Wi-Fi usage has pushed the Wi-Fi 7 standard to offer enhanced data throughput, improved latency and support more spectrum in the face of mounting network congestion. Achieving this requires highly complex, cutting-edge functionalities like 4K QAM modulation, Multi Link Operation and Multi Resource Unit to optimise link efficiency across the available bands.
“Ceva’s RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform incorporates all the features of this latest-generation, wireless standard, dramatically simplifying development and time-to-market for companies looking to add Wi-Fi 7 connectivity to their products.”
Wi-Fi 7's 4K QAM modulation scheme is a substantial increase on the previous 1K QAM of Wi-Fi 6, while Multi Link Operation (MLO) introduces dynamic channel aggregation, combining heterogenous channels from the same or different bands to navigate interference and boost throughput.
Similarly, Multi Resource Units (MRU) enables the creation of larger channel bandwidths by intelligently stitching together punctured or disjointed Resource Units within the same band. The outcome is an up to 5 times increase in raw speeds but also significantly reduced latency, thanks to diminished contentions and retries.
RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP Key Features.
- Hallmark features of Wi-Fi 7 including 4K QAM modulation, Multi Link Operation (MLO), Multi Resource Units (MRU)
- 2x2 MU-OFDM(A) transmitter and receiver supporting 802.11be, up to MCS13-2SS.
- 2x2 MU-MIMO (Multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output technology) for client-dense environments.
- Beamforming to maximise link budget in multi-antenna systems.
- Full MAC software stack, supporting the latest security standards including WPA3 and China’s WAPI security standard
- Compatible with the EasyMesh standard for interconnectivity between different APs.
- Advanced Packet Traffic Arbiter (PTA) functionality for Wi-Fi & Bluetooth connectivity coexistence.
- Flexible RF interface enables integration with radio circuitry from multiple Ceva partners or licensee’s own radio technology.
- Fully backward compatible with previous Wi-Fi generations (Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E)
