Wi-Fi networks are wasting a gigabit—but new multi-user beamforming will triple the current speeds

We will soon be seeing triple the current high speeds of the WiFi standard.   Here's the first part of this article (click on the link below for the full text).

"Jon Brodkin - May 20 2014, 6:00am PDT -- Wi-Fi equipment based on the new 802.11ac standard—often called Gigabit Wi-Fi—has been on the market for nearly two years. These products offer greater bandwidth and other improvements over gear based on the older 802.11n specification, but they don’t implement one of the most impressive features of 11ac.

It was simply too complicated to deploy all the upgrades at once, hardware makers say. As a result, 11ac networks actually waste a lot of capacity when serving devices like smartphones and tablets. This shortcoming should be fixed over the next year with new networking equipment and upgrades to end-user devices. Once everything is in place, Wi-Fi networks will be better able to serve lots of devices at once, particularly the mobile devices that every single person in the US seemingly has in his or her hands every minute of the day.

It's hard to imagine a single smartphone or tablet needing to receive more than 433Mbps of data. But the fact that MU-MIMO-powered Wi-Fi will be able to serve more users simultaneously could bring huge benefits to large-scale wireless networks, like those in airports, convention centers, and sports stadiums. Real-world throughput will end up being something lower than 433Mbps to each user because of networking overhead and other limitations.

'Traditionally, access points have been equipped with omnidirectional antennas, which are so named because they send energy in all directions,' wrote Wi-Fi expert Matthew Gast in the book, 802.11ac: A Survival Guide. (Gast also oversees development of the software that powers Aerohive Networks’ equipment.) 'An alternative method of transmission is to focus energy toward a receiver, a process called beamforming. Provided the AP [access point] has sufficient information to send the radio energy preferentially in one direction, it is possible to reach farther.'

The first 11ac products implemented single-user beamforming, sending one transmission to a single receiver. Multi-user beamforming, coming in the next wave of 11ac products this year and next year, enables MU-MIMO and its simultaneous transmission to multiple devices.

'Don’t get me wrong, 433Mbps is nice,” Gast told Ars in a phone interview. “But there's an unused capacity because the AP is capable of transmitting three 433Mbps streams, but my phone can only receive one. You lose two-thirds of the capacity when this happens.'”

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/wi-fi-networks-are-wasting-a-gigabit-but-multi-user-beamforming-will-save-the-day/