Edgewater Wireless launches MLX 488 WiFi7 Spectrum Slicing platform
Edgewater Wireless Systems has announced its next-generation of Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing powered silicon solutions targeting residential, enterprise and prosumer applications. Building on the latest Wi-Fi standard, WiFi7 (802.11BE), Edgewater’s platform offers more physical channel capacity than single-channel, legacy Wi-Fi architectures — bringing lower latency and reduced contention for existing and new devices.
With ‘Beta’ Spectrum Slicing capable silicon now available for select partner evaluations, engineering samples of Edgewater’s WiFi7 silicon are targeted by the end of Q2 CY2024, with commercial products expected at the end of Q2 CY2025.
“We are thrilled to announce Edgewater’s groundbreaking MLX 488 platform, our Spectrum Slicing enabled WiFi7 solution. With the MLX 488 platform, we are bringing Spectrum Slicing to WiFi7 and creating the highest link density for features like MLO,” said Eric Smith, VP of Product for Edgewater Wireless.
“WiFi7, with its marquee feature Multi-Link Operation (MLO), offers one of the most significant advancement in the recent history of Wi-Fi. Simply put, the more available physical links, the more effective the MLO feature becomes. Our platform boasts the highest link density in the market and can force-multiply performance for both new and existing devices, as proven by our work with Liberty Global,” Smith continued.
WiFi7 (802.11BE), or Extremely High Throughput, is the newest iteration of the Wi-Fi standard and will support 320 MHz wide channels and increased QAM (4096) in the 6 GHz band. Most importantly, WiFi7 will include Multi-Link Operation (MLO), a coup for Edgewater and its supporters.
An embrace of multi-channel architecture, Multi-link Operation (MLO), and the Dual-Channel Wi-Fi standard are the first features capable of taking advantage of more physical links/channels between access points and devices to increase throughput and lower latency.
Increasing link density on Access Points will become critical as the number of MLO-capable devices increases. Edgewater’s Spectrum Slicing boasts link density, creating a future-proof platform for service delivery.
Edgewater’s MLX 488 WiFi7 platform is the silicon solution to couple the performance of WiFi7 with the proven robustness and flexibility of Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing: up to 320 MHz wide channel support, Multi-Flex MLO and 4K QAM.
Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing enables more in-band links/channels than all legacy Wi-Fi architectures. Backed by 26 granted patents, Edgewater’s physical layer spectrum slicing allows a frequency band to be divided, or sliced, to enable more radios to operate in a given area.
Think of Spectrum Slicing as moving from a single-land road to a multi-lane highway — Levelling up Wi-Fi features and applications for existing and new devices.
Edgewater’s MLX 488 WiFi7 platform key features and benefits are engineered to include:
- AI-enabled, dynamic channel width supporting up to 28 concurrent links/channels.
- Multi-Flex MLO: the first high-performance MLO solution engineered to support multiple concurrent MLO connections.
- Integrated SSA (Spectral Surveillance Architecture): real-time, full-band capture spectral surveillance capabilities without disrupting Wi-Fi traffic.
- Intelligent Channel Association (ICA™) optimizes device and application layer performance.
“Bringing Spectrum Slicing capabilities to a WiFi7 platform finally offers service providers a way to deliver next-level performance to new devices and the billions of existing Wi-Fi devices on their networks today. We are tackling some of the biggest challenges facing Wi-Fi today, and Spectrum Slicing has been proven to deliver dramatic performance gains for all devices,” said Andrew Skafel, President and CEO of Edgewater Wireless.
“It is a very exciting time in our industry as Wi-Fi moves to embrace multi-channel/link, and we are thrilled to announce the MLX 488 platform — engineered for service providers,” Skafel concluded.