At IFA 2022 in Berlin, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon officially showcased the HBS Multi-Link in 320MHz capability of Wi-Fi 7. For smartphones, PCs, and next-generation XR devices, HBS (High Band Simultaneous) Multi-Link is the key Wi-Fi 7 feature even if Wi-Fi 7 brings about unprecedented improvements to Wi-Fi. This is because it allows those devices to use Wi-Fi 7’s full, worldwide performance potential even when the 6GHz spectrum is not yet available.

An important Wi-Fi 7 implementation called HBS Multi-Link uses two Wi-Fi radios simultaneously to provide four streams of high band connectivity in the 5GHz and/or 6GHz bands. All multi-link modes are supported by the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 Mobile Connectivity System, and customers may enjoy low latency and interference, jitter-free connections, and lightning-fast speeds with HBS Multi-Link.

The only way to apply Wi-Fi 7’s full capabilities globally is through HBS Multi-Link. Peak real-world performance is made possible by 320MHz channels when a 6GHz spectrum has been made accessible for Wi-Fi. However, when 160MHz channels are available, HBS Multi-Link can achieve 5 Gbps of over-the-air throughput by aggregating those two 160MHz channels, which is more than double the performance of Wi-Fi 6/6E, as we showcased today at IFA in a live, over-the-air demonstration. This will be important when 320MHz channels become unavailable due to congestion or for any other cause.

Without HBS Multi-Link, Wi-Fi 7 begins to look like Wi-Fi 6 a really lot.

HBS Multi-Link enables the aggregation of 160 + 80 MHz channels to surge rates up to 50% faster than Wi-Fi 6/6E in areas where bigger 320 MHz channels are unreachable due to the lack of the 6GHz spectrum itself.

The most cutting-edge use cases in XR, Metaverse, cloud-based gaming, 8K video streaming, video conferencing, and more will focus on this type of performance.