Researchers at MIT have a new plan that can solve more of the world's Wi-Fi problems when it comes to public hotspots through a new technology that help routers "talk" to each other better.
Wireless devices can still overload a certain part of the spectrum and the addition of more Wi-Fi extenders in a place will not resolve that problem. The more users can connect, the more the interference which usually results in poor Internet speeds.
MIT researchers propose a new tech method of getting the wireless access points to tweak their signals through what is called the MegaMIMO 2.0, Fast Company has learned. The tech is basically an extension of the already existing MIMO method that is used by several antennas that serve under one Wi-Fi AP.
MegaMIMO 2.0 will help the several APs to work together to solve the Wi-Fi traffic collision problems that are caused by too many users and interference. It will help the APs to tweak their signals in order to avoid network congestion which is similar to how cars can get stuck at a four-way intersection.
The result of the new MegaMIMO 2.0 on their lab tests showed that the data transfer speeds went up by 3.3 times faster than usual, CNN Money reported. MIT researcher Ezzeldin Hussein Hamed claimed that the speed could have been 10 times faster if there had been more routers that were used in their tests.
Unfortunately, there is still no estimated time of arrival for the tech to be commercially viable. The researchers still want to test out their new tech at larger gatherings and spaces such as a stadium or even a mall.
People should note that the Internet speed will still depend on the Internet Service Provider and the subscription. What the MIT researchers are tweaking is the data transfer speed of the Wi-Fi routers alone and not the actual download and upload speed that everyone is familiar with.
Researchers from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory published their findings in a paper online. The study is titled "Real-time Distributed MIMO Systems" and can be found in a PDF form from the ACM Digital Library.