Consumers, enterprises both small and large, and carriers everywhere are looking to Wi-Fi to deliver wire-like connectivity over the last 100 meters. But doing this over an unlicensed spectrum (Wi-Fi) where there is a lot of interference has been next to impossible. Yet vendors are already bringing 802.11n products to market as the industry continues to wait for the standard to be ratified in 2011, and they’re making promises of lofty performance numbers that simply can’t be counted on all of the time.
Recent Wi-Fi breakthroughs are changing all this. Innovations in the area of smart “beamforming” are proving to be revolutionary (not evolutionary) in automatically dealing with interference and range issues – providing predictable performance at range.
Similar to an Internet router that picks the best path for every packet by monitoring the performance of all its available paths, a smart beam steering system monitors the RF environment and adapts the direction of the transmit signal to avoid interference.
Dubbed “Smart Wi-Fi,” this technology focuses Wi-Fi signals (like a lighthouse) toward the intended destination, only where they are needed, and away from the direction of strong noise. Chart 1 compares the fundamental differences between traditional Wi-Fi versus smart Wi-Fi implementations.
CHART 1:
Comparing Conventional Wi-Fi and Smart Wi-Fi Systems
Capability | Conventional | Smart |
Directional beamforming |
| X |
Extended signal range |
| X |
Interference avoidance |
| X |
Interference rejection |
| X |
Adaptive performance tuning |
| X |
Omni-directional signal transmission/reception | X |
|
Dynamic beam “steering” |
| X |
Signal path monitoring per client |
| X |
For every packet transmitted to a laptop or mobile handheld device, an acknowledgement is sent back from the client to the smart Wi-Fi access point. The access point uses these acknowledgements to understand if it is using the best path to a given client. If, for some reason, the performance over that path begins to degrade, the system automatically switches to a different antenna combination without users seeing even a flicker when watching a streaming HD video. By constantly picking the highest quality paths available, Smart Wi-Fi transmits at the highest data rates reliably, avoiding transmission errors. This agility provides a level of adaptiveness never seen before in Wi-Fi.
By focusing Wi-Fi energy only where it’s needed, signals can now reach two to four times further than traditional Wi-Fi systems. This reduces the number of access points (and the associated capital and operational costs) needed in a given area.
In addition to focusing Wi-Fi signals and steering them around problems as they crop up, Smart Wi-Fi technology mitigates interference. This is achieved through “selective listening” on only the antenna elements that can best hear the client.
