Eye Current

MIMO Technology in Development Stages

ETH Zurich has successfully tested a WLAN network using MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology that makes transmission speeds of 216 Mbps possible on conventional networks. The MIMO technology lets several transceivers communicate with each other at the same time all while using the same bandwidth.

The use of multiple antenna technology sounds great but comes with some limiting disadvantages. Take into account that WLAN networks means that there will most likely be more than one user at a time sending and receiving data. This can become quite a task for a computer to not only send a lot of packets of information but it will have to receive and decode the incoming signal to its original base-band signal. Here’s a good example, imagine a room full of cubicles and now every individual is looking over their cubicle throwing handfuls of paper every direction. To simulate computing speed, there is one guy going through all of these papers in the corner of the room. This can get messy and very slow when many users are involved, obviously. The models using MIMO technology need to be built using the most cost effective solutions, which means cheap chips will be used to decode all of the data back to base-band and that basically spells out that it will have a slow computing speed. All in all, until better and more effective chips are found/developed this transfer speed can not be properly used to its fullest capabilities.

Currently there are limitations but we can always count on time and future developments to give us an idea when it will be commercially available.

posted by James B. @ 11:20 AM