By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Smart antenna technology used to be the exclusive domain of premium enterprise-grade Wi-Fi APs but now smart antenna pioneer Adant is reinventing the category with affordable solutions for residential Wi-Fi including gateways and mesh. Smart antennas deliver a significant performance boost for example for low-power indoor 6 GHz devices as well as many other benefits, Adant says. A new white paper from Adant is available below.
Smart Wi-Fi antennas capable of dynamically switching between hundreds or thousands of antenna patterns to boost throughput and reduce interference has been a key selling point for premium enterprise AP providers for years. Now smart antenna pioneer Adant is introducing a low-cost smart antenna solution for the residential market including for mesh and gateways. Adant’s smart antenna for residential gateways has already been deployed in more than 2 million homes, Adant says.
“Smart antennas apply to any band but has become particularly important in the case of 6 GHz Wi-Fi, which in most cases is limited by regulation requiring them to operate at low power. This means 6 GHz Wi-Fi mesh as a starting point delivers a shorter range, which is likely to leave coverage holes. Smart antennas built into mesh nodes deliver the equivalent of standard power performance, which is a huge benefit to 6 GHz Wi-Fi QoE in the home,” says Daniele Piazza, CEO and co-founder of Adant.
Boosting Wi-Fi mesh performance without increasing power levels also comes with many other benefits. With lowered heat dissipation requirements, mesh unit hardware designs can be kept small. “You also avoid spending more on higher-power components, such as standard power FEMs. And of course finally, power consumption can be kept low. This is important for many service providers and consumers who are increasingly attracted to more eco-friendly Wi-Fi solutions,” Daniele Piazza says.
Hardware for Adant’s new generation of smart Wi-Fi antennas for integration into home broadband systems is substantially simplified compared to enterprise-grade smart antennas of years past. Adant says the solution doesn’t add any antennas beyond what is needed for the original design and instead adds a handful of switches to the main PCB for the mesh unit. This unique architecture means hardware costs are only incrementally higher than for a system without smart antennas, the company says.
Adant’s secret sauce is the software used to control the antennas intelligently. Smart antennas for mesh systems are somewhat different in that mesh units must align their smart antennas in the direction of each other to form the best link. Control information is shared via in-band signalling, Adant says.
“In many cases a smart antenna solution for 6 GHz LPI mesh will deliver performance comparable to standard power while costing less, also because neither AFC services nor GPS chips for geolocation are needed. In Europe, consumers will be able to experience the equivalent of standard power 6 GHz Wi-Fi, which is otherwise not available – or at least not yet,” says Daniele Piazza.
For more details including performance test results we recommend having a look at Adant’s new white paper “Cost-effective, eco-friendly and high-performance WiFi mesh networks with Adant sMART-4-mesh”, which is available for download below.
/Claus.
