Ceva Expands Connect IP Portfolio with Wi-Fi 7 Platform for High-End Consumer and Industrial IoT

The RivieraWavesTM Wi-Fi 7 IP platform is ideal for next-generation Wi-Fi access points and station/client products.

Provides a full-featured, cost- and power-optimized solution for integrating high-performance Wi-Fi 7 connectivity into SoCs

Ceva, a global leader in semiconductor products and software IP licensors that help intelligent edge devices connect, sense and infer data more reliably and efficiently, has further expanded its popular connectivity IP licensing portfolio and released the next-generation RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform, which is mainly targeted at high-end consumer and industrial applications, including gateways, TVs, set-top boxes, streaming devices, AR/VR headsets, personal computing and smartphones . RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP takes full advantage of all the latest advanced features of the IEEE 802.11be standard to provide high-performance and cost- and power-optimized premium Wi-Fi solutions that can be integrated into the next wave of Wi-Fi access point (AP) and station (STA) products.

According to ABI Research, a global technology intelligence company, annual shipments of Wi-Fi-enabled chipset products will exceed 5.1 billion by 2028, of which chipsets supporting the Wi-Fi 7 standard will exceed 1.7 billion . As shipments of Wi-Fi-enabled devices continue to grow, more and more semiconductor companies and OEMs are choosing to integrate Wi-Fi connectivity into chip designs, requiring high-quality Wi-Fi IP to reduce development costs and risks. Over the past decade, Ceva has established a leadership position in Wi-Fi IP licensing covering Wi-Fi 4/5/6, and its RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 IP series has more than 40 licensee customers, serving a wide range of end markets and applications in the IoT field, from endpoints to access points. Ceva further extends its leadership with RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP, providing a unique, comprehensive 802.11be MAC and PHY solution that can be integrated into next-generation Wi-Fi SoC products.

Andrew Zignani, Senior Research Director at ABI Research, commented: “Ceva’s wireless connectivity IP has been instrumental in the adoption of connectivity standards across the broader IoT market, as evidenced by its customers shipping more than 1 billion connectivity chips per year. With the introduction of the RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform, semiconductor companies and OEMs now have a trusted partner that can differentiate their connectivity product roadmaps with high-performance Wi-Fi 7 chipsets while reducing risk and cost of ownership.”

“The continued expansion of Wi-Fi adoption has driven the Wi-Fi 7 standard to deliver higher data throughput and improved latency, as well as support for more spectrum in the face of increasing network congestion,” said Tal Shalev, vice president and general manager of Ceva’s Wireless IoT business unit. “Achieving this requires sophisticated, cutting-edge features such as 4K QAM modulation, Multi-Link Operation (MLO) and Multiple Resource Units (MRU) to optimize link efficiency in existing spectrum bands. Our RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform integrates the full capabilities of the latest generation of wireless standards, greatly simplifying development and accelerating 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 significant improvement over the previous 1K QAM of Wi-Fi 6, and multi-link operation introduces dynamic channel aggregation, which seamlessly combines heterogeneous channels from the same or different frequency bands to eliminate interference and increase throughput. Similarly, multiple resource units can create larger channel bandwidths by intelligently splicing point-like or incoherent resource units within the same frequency band, which not only significantly increases the original speed by five times, but also reduces contention and retries, thereby greatly reducing latency.

RivieraWaves™ Wi-Fi 7 IP Key Features

- Wi-Fi 7 signature features include 4K QAM modulation, multi-link operation (MLO), and multiple resource units (MRU)

- 2x2 MU-OFDM(A) transmitter and receiver supporting 802.11be up to MCS13-2SS.

- 2x2 Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) technology for dense client environments.

- Beamforming techniques to improve the link budget of multi-antenna systems.

- Complete MAC software stack, supporting the latest security standards including WPA3 and China WAPI

- Compatible with the EasyMesh standard to enable interconnection between different access points.

- Advanced Packet Traffic Arbitrator (PTA) functionality to enable coexistence of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections.

- Flexible RF interface that can integrate multiple Ceva partners’ radio circuits or the licensee’s own radio technology

- Fully backward compatible with previous generations of Wi-Fi products (Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E)

Availability

Ceva currently offers the RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform for access point applications, with optimized site implementations to be available later this year.