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MIT researchers can boost Wi-Fi speeds at mass gatherings threefold

The researchers use a system called MegaMIMO to get routers to work in tandem and deliver a faster signal.

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While your home wireless internet may work well enough for your daily use, you know how it can get at an event with free Wi-Fi. Hundreds of attendees trying to access the internet at the same time can inadvertently throttle the bandwidth, ruining connectivity for everyone.

But once again, science comes to the rescue. In a recently published paper, MIT researchers have developed a way to improve the efficiency of wireless routers at mass gatherings, even increasing their performance three times over.

Wi-Fi signals can bounce off barriers in the environment, effectively slowing down  and weakening the signals. Smartphones and other similar devices use MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) to strengthen their Wi-Fi reception, in order to fix that problem. MIMO uses multiple transmitters to send out a strong signal, and multiple receivers to integrate and strengthen weak incoming signals. Unfortunately, that causes more interference when multiple devices using the technology are present.

The system uses something called MegaMIMO,which coordinates multiple routers at an event, getting them to work efficiently in tandem, as opposed to them all fighting one another. What MegaMIMO does is restrict access points like routers to send signals to only one device per frequency at a time. This way, interference between the router signals is minimised.

 

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