8 x 8 MU-MIMO Biggest Benefit in Wi-Fi 6 for Data Throughput, Says SA
With full eight transmit and eight receive antennas, 8 x 8 MU-MIMO provides the biggest benefit to total system throughput and capacity in Wi-Fi 6 networks vs. other features of Wi-Fi 6, said Strategy Analytics Friday. Marketing messages about Wi-Fi…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
6 have typically focused on benefits of orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), important for reducing congestion, but access points with 8 x 8 MU-MIMO can simultaneously address up to four times as many 2 x 2 client devices as OFDMA alone, said analyst Christopher Taylor. Many entry-level and mainstream Wi-Fi 6 access points use only two or four antennas, but more than two-thirds of access points SA identified in the premium tier use the full eight, he said, highlighting Quantenna, Qualcomm, Marvell and Celeno as suppliers of Wi-Fi 6 chipsets capable of 8 x 8 MU-MIMO. “The benefits of MU-MIMO have been proven in the cellular world with LTE,” and smartphone and laptop PC OEMs have shown strong support for Wi-Fi 6 with MU-MIMO, said analyst Stephen Entwistle.