Multiuser MIMO powers connected home
A new generation of routers, many unveiled last week at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, promise to deliver connection speeds in excess of 1 gigabit per second using an as yet unadopted 802.11ac – or Wave 2 – standard.
The precursor to Wave 2 Wi-Fi, 802.11ac 2013, was adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in December 2013.
D-Link Systems rolled out its new Ultra Performance series routers, including the AC3200, which supports speeds up to 3.2 Gbps on three bands: two in the 5 GHz band and one in the 2.4 GHz band.
“We’ve set the bar for how a Wi-Fi router should look and perform,” said Daniel Kelley, VP of marketing for D-Link, in a statement.
Another component of Wave 2 is multiuser multiple-input, multiple-output functionality. In home applications, this will allow multiple users to simultaneously access multiple content streams – your favorite Netflix series, for example – without overly taxing the connection.
At CES, Quantenna Communications demonstrated a 10 G Wi-Fi platform that it said supports configurable 8×8 MIMO as well as MU MIMO.
Quantenna CEO Sam Heidari said that since the announcement, “We have been overwhelmed with the positive feedback from our customers and service providers. They immediately saw the advantages a true 8×8 MIMO system can deliver in their future home gateways.”
Celeno Communications, based in Ra’anana, Israel, is also in the Wave 2 game with its Quicksilver products, which support MU-MIMO and 160-megahertz channel width. CEO Gilad Rozen said Celeno’s new products enable “Wi-Fi networks to work not only faster, but in a smarter and more agile way. … Both enterprise and consumer Wi-Fi needs are moving much faster than even industry standards can keep up with. By looking beyond today to wireless networks of tomorrow, we are developing solutions that can be more agile in the field, and virtualization is a huge part of that.”
