You are working on your laptop and suddenly the PowerPoint you are editing, freezes. Why? Because your children in the other room started downloading a heavy video from YouTube. Familiar scenario? Happens all the time when you use a Wi-Fi router to share a single broadband connection to the home. Wireless hotspots are limited by the technology they harness. The underlying Wi-Fi technology (called 802.11 a, b, g ,n or ac) that fuels the wireless hotspot at home or office today, can serve only one device at a time. It cycles rapidly from one PC, phone or laptop to the other, creating the illusion that all are being simultaneously served. But when one user gobbles up the gigabytes, other applications grind to a halt. Not anymore.
MIMO
The first devices that harness an exciting new technology were unveiled last month -- by mid 2016 we can expect to see them in India. The Wi-Fi routers we use today exploit what is called SI MIMO: Single User Multiple In, Multiple Out. That means, while multiple devices can latch on to hotpot, IT only serves one user at a time -- which explains the familiar logjams. The current Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac has now been updated as 11 ac Wave2 and it enables Multi User or MU MIMO. This means it can serve every user device in the home, simultaneously. No more waiting in queue!
Lnksys
Linksys says its new Max-Stream series of MU-MIMO-ready routers, which we can expect to buy for between Rs 14,000 and Rs 20,000, "function as if multiple devices have their own dedicated router....the whole household can play video games, listen to music, check email, shop, stream movie – all at the same time." A new Wave 2 router alone is not enough; you need a matching wireless adapter at the PC or laptop end. So Linksys has also launched a Max Stream USB adapter for the equivalent of Rs 4,000.
Another router leader, TP-Link has gone ahead and announced a MU-MIMO router, the Talon AD7000, that offers the next iteration in data speed beyond 11ac -- that is 11ad . This means serving multiple users at the same time at even higher speeds -- up to 4.6Gbps.. about 3 times faster than all 11ac routers today
Who needs these dizzy speeds? Well, you and I will demand them, as we get used to better and sharper TV -- which is already moving from 2K and HD to 4K and Ultra HD. By end 2016, we can expect dish operators to offer more and more content in 4K -- mostly live sports. This will be useless unless we have the means to share such pixel-rich stuff across the home ... and on our phones. MU-MIMO does just that. Acer has already made 3 models in its Aspire series of notebooks, MU-MIMO-ready as has Motorola with its X series phones. The common factor is a chip solution called Qualcomm Vive. Expect to find Vive under the hood of many more smartphones and tablets this year.
Meet the MIMO Man:
Who better to help us understand what MU-MIMO means for us that the man widely known as the Father of MIMO -- India-born emeritus professor at Stanford University, Dr Arogyaswamy Paulraj? It is exactly 20 years since he invented the MIMO standard and obtained a patent jointly with another Indian and Stanford don, Dr Tom Kailath.
Who better to help us understand what MU-MIMO means for us that the man widely known as the Father of MIMO -- India-born emeritus professor at Stanford University, Dr Arogyaswamy Paulraj?
"The increased data rate offered by MIMO is distributed across multiple users simultaneously - instead of a single user as in ordinary MIMO", he told me, but adds a caution: "11ac works at 5GHz and is better at going through walls in the home or office. 11ad works at 60GHz and can deliver higher speeds but it doesn't penetrate walls and is useful only within the room " (Which is why products like the TP-Link Talon combine 11ac with ad )
Dr Paulraj who is also known in India as the naval officer-leader of the team which developed the country's first indigenous sonar anti submarine defence system, has received the Marconi Prize for his MIMO work - an honour he shares with Internet greats like Google search creator Larry Page, mobile phone inventor Martin Cooper and Internet protocol author Vint Cerf. In recent weeks he became only the second PIO to be elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a position he will take up in June.
