Ever wondered why does your smartphone’s blazing fast internet turn into a 90’s dialup connection when you are at a public place? Whether you are using your own cellular network, or using that place’s WiFi, you will never be able to get much speed in places like shopping malls, music concerts, sporting events, etc.
In view of this problem, a team of researchers from the MIT Computer Science and AI Laboratory have devised a system that can increase the speed of internet at such places. A new research paper published by the MIT engineers revealed how they were able to reduce the interference of multiple devices and thus open up the throttled Internet access at public places. This made the internet work more seamlessly, and through improved network management, they were able to increase the Wi-Fi speeds 10 times as compared to the old technology.
In the research paper, they explain the system MegaMIMO 2.0, through which the WiFi signals change their frequency all the times, thus having different travelling frequencies than the other signals. It is a distributed MIMO system that control and monitors the activity of access points, e.g., wireless routers. This is done so to change the frequencies of the signals, thus eliminating interference allowing all transmitters in an area to operate more efficiently.
The system was tested using four independent transmitters and receivers within the same area. It was observed that using a traditional point-to-point uncoordinated MIMO system made them operate at about one quarter efficiency as they kept on interfering with each other. But after coordinating the four transmitters, MegaMIMO 2.0 increased the speed of data transfer by a factor of 3.6. And as the interference is likely to increase with the increasing number of transmitters, coordinating them is expected to produce greater performance gains.
The team is now looking to commercialize their findings as a product, and soon enough we will be able to solve the problem of clogged up Internet at a public place for good!
Have you ever faced any problems using WiFi when at a public event? Narrate your story below!