James Delahunty
5 Apr 2014 13:50
Qualcomm is aiming to drastically increase Wi-Fi performance, particularly on networks with a lot of users, with its new MU-MIMO chipsets.
The goal is to achieve better overall Wi-Fi speeds on networks by making more efficient use of network capacity. With standard Wi-Fi, clients are served sequentially; during this time, only one device is sending and receiving information, thus only a small portion of network capacity is being used.
The accumulation of these sequential events creates a drop in throughput and capacity as more devices join the network. MU-MIMO (Multi-User MIMO) enables simultaneous transmission to groups of clients, making more efficient use of available Wi-Fi network capacity and speeding up transmissions.
In order to extract the maximum benefits of MU-MIMO, it must be used on both sides of the connection. To accelerate the benefits of MU-MIMO for more Wi-Fi users, Qualcomm Atheros is providing a complete ecosystem of solutions for networking products, as well as smartphones, tablets, computers, consumer electronics and automobiles.
"Great connectivity is not just about increasing the absolute speed. It's about making better use of network and airtime efficiency to support the growing number of connected devices, services and applications," said Dan Rabinovitsj, senior vice president, Qualcomm Atheros, Inc.
"After seven years of MU-MIMO development and testing, we've gained a deep understanding of real-world channel behavior with this advanced Wi-Fi technology in crowded environments. These insights have led to the creation of our precision-based algorithm technology that, along with technologies like the Qualcomm Internet Processor and StreamBoost™, maximizes Wi-Fi performance for all connected devices."