锐韬的MIMO笔记

Wi-Fi signals are transmitted and received through antennas. What will help if the Wi-Fi is too slow? Add more antennas. This method of using multiple antennas to improve wireless transmission quality is called multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). It has become an essential element of wireless communication standards including IEEE 802.11n (first Wi-Fi standards that introduced MIMO), substantially increasing the theoretical Wi-Fi rate.

Definition of MIMO

A MIMO antenna system includes m transmit antennas and n receive antennas. Signals are transmitted and received by multiple antennas at the transmit end and the receive end, enhancing communication quality. MIMO multiplies the capacity of a system channel by using multiple transmit antennas and receive antennas under the same spectrum resources and antenna transmit power. With this obvious advantage, MIMO is regarded as the core technology for next-generation mobile communication.

The following table lists the theoretical air interface rates supported by 802.11n/ac with different numbers of spatial streams.

MIMO Forms

Based on the numbers of transmit antennas or receive antennas, MIMO can be classified into SISO, SIMO, MISO, and MIMO.

MIMO Forms

Detailed descriptions are as follows:

Single-input single-output (SISO)

Single-input multiple-output (SIMO)

Multiple-input single-output (MISO)

In a broad sense, SIMO and MISO are MIMO variations.

Based on the number of users, MIMO can be classified into single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) and multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO).

Definition of SU-MIMO

Single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) is a multi-transmitter and receiver technology that lets a wireless access point send multiple, simultaneous data streams to one compatible endpoint at a time. SU-MIMO is typically compared in contrast with multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO).

SU-MIMO began as part of the 802.11n wireless standard in 2007. SU-MIMO enables multiple data streams to be transmitted to or received between Wi-Fi devices.

In SU-MIMO, a device such as an access point or router uses multiple antennas to simultaneously send multiple data streams to a single endpoint device, such as a phone, laptop or tablet. Dividing available bandwidth into multiple spatial streams increases the efficiency and reliability of transmissions.

SU-MIMO technologies also make use of MIMO functions such as spatial multiplexing and beamforming to direct and improve signal strengths.

For SU-MIMO to work, both the transmitting and receiving devices -- such as an AP and a laptop -- must support MIMO. That means both devices must have at least two antennas, which may be a burden for smaller devices, such as smartphones.

Definition of MU-MIMO

MU-MIMO allows a router to send data to a maximum of 4 Wi-Fi terminals at the same time and set up an independent “spatial stream” for each client, increasing network resource utilization. Therefore, it is regarded as an innovative technology in the wireless development process in the industry. Note that both the router and Wi-Fi terminals need to support MU-MIMO.

Uplink MU-MIMO (UL MU-MIMO)

UL MU-MIMO is an important feature introduced in Wi-Fi 6. UL MU-MIMO uses the multi-antenna technology of the transmitter and receiver to transmit data simultaneously on multiple spatial streams over the same channel. Multiple data streams in UL MU-MIMO come from multiple users. In Wi-Fi 5 and earlier versions, UL SU MIMO is used, that is, data from only one user can be received. The efficiency is low in multi-user concurrency scenarios. After supporting UL MU-MIMO and the UL OFDMA technologies, Wi-Fi 6 can perform MU-MIMO transmission and allocate different RUs for multi-user multiple-access transmission, improving the efficiency in multi-user concurrent scenarios and greatly reducing the application latency.

Uplink MU-MIMO

Downlink MU-MIMO (DL MU-MIMO)

Wi-Fi 5 has introduced MU-MIMO, but supports only 4×4 downlink MU-MIMO. In Wi-Fi 6, MU-MIMO is further increased to 8×8 downlink MU-MIMO. Thanks to the DL OFDMA technology, MU-MIMO transmission can be performed at the same time and different RUs can be allocated for multi-user multiple-access transmission, which not only increases the concurrent access capacity but also balances the throughput.

Downlink MU-MIMO

Difference from SU-MIMO

A conventional single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) router can communicate with only 1 device at a time. With the advent of a fully-connected era and continuous increase of Wi-Fi terminals, an SU-MIMO router has to communicate with Wi-Fi terminals one by one in turn. Each access device keeps preempting resources, the router is overloaded, and the access rate for each device is slow.

In addition, a router generally has 3 to 4 antennas, and an access terminal generally has only 1 or 2 antennas. Because the SU-MIMO router can communicate with only 1 Wi-Fi terminal at a time, it is difficult for a Wi-Fi terminal to occupy all transmission channels. As a result, some antennas of the router are idle.

SU-MIMO and MU-MIMO

For example, the overall theoretical transmission rate of a router that supports the IEEE 11ac 4×4 MU-MIMO is up to 1733 Mbps. When the router is connected to and transmits data to a Wi-Fi terminal (with 1 antenna) that does not support MU-MIMO, the maximum theoretical transmission rate is only 433 Mbps. The remaining 1.3 Gbps capacity is idle at that time. If both the router and the Wi-Fi terminal support MU MIMO, the router can be connected to and transmit data with a maximum of 4 Wi-Fi terminals at the same time. In this way, the total capacity of the router is fully utilized.

Features	SU-MIMO	MU-MIMO
Full Form	Single User MIMO	Multi User MIMO
Function	It is the mechanism in which information of single user is transmitted simultaneously over more than one data stream by BS (Base Station) in same time/frequency grid (i.e. resources).	In MU-MIMO, data streams are distributed across multiple users on same time/frequency resources but dependent upon spatial separation.
Major Objective	It helps in increasing user/link data rate as it is function of bandwidth and power availability.	It helps in increasing system capacity i.e. number of users supported by base station.
Performance impact (Antenna Correlation)	More susceptible	Less susceptible
Performance Impact (Source of interference)	Adjacent co-channel cells	Links supporting same cell and other MU-MIMO users, and adjacent co-channel cells
Power allocation	Split between multiple layers to same user. Fixed per transmit antenna	Shared between multi-users and multiple layers. It can be allocated per MU-MIMO user based on channel condition.
CSI/Feedback process	Varies upon implementation, TDD or FDD and reciprocity or feedback based. Less susceptible on feedback granularity and quality	Very dependent upon CSI for channel estimation accuracy. More susceptible on feedback granularity and quality
Beamforming dependency	Varies upon implementation TDD or FDD and reciprocity or feedback based. Less susceptible on feedback granularity and quality	Greatly assisted by appropriate beamforming mechanisms (spatial focusing) which maximizes gain towards the intended users. More susceptible on feedback granularity and quality

Advantages of MU-MIMO

• Increases the network capacity and spectrum utilization.

MU-MIMO can effectively boost the total capacity of a wireless router by 2 to 3 times that in the SU-MIMO era.

• Meets high bandwidth requirements of applications such as the video service.

MU-MIMO eliminates idle MIMO intervals and improves the data transmission efficiency on the network. Therefore, it can better meet the requirements of video, audio, and other bandwidth-hungry applications.

• Improves user experience of traditional Wi-Fi terminals.

The overall efficiency improvement brought by MU-MIMO enables more idle time or capacity on the network to serve traditional Wi-Fi terminals (that support only SU-MIMO). That is, the application experience of traditional Wi-Fi terminals can also be improved.