By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
MediaTek has spent years catching up to the Wi-Fi chipset competition but now the company says it is pulling substantially ahead when it comes to Wi-Fi 7 and its most important feature: MLO. The company has invested heavily in new silicon architectures and functionality for improving MLO performance on both the AP and client sides. The result is up to 57% more speed under some channel conditions, the company says.
MLO is the marquee Wi-Fi 7 feature – but not all MLO’s are created equal. Silicon giant MediaTek is using the generational shift to Wi-Fi 7 to get ahead in the market – specifically by investing in a unique, performance-boosting MLO implementation. MediaTek’s MLO includes innovations in both hardware architecture and software, improving both speed and latency, the company says.
“Our Wi-Fi 7 strategy is to leave legacy architectures behind and even prepare for Wi-Fi 8 already now. That’s why we today can offer market-leading MLO performance for both APs and clients. To do that we’ve introduced a series of new design concepts, including single-MAC MLO architecture and adaptive multi-link load balancing for APs. On the client side we’re offering a hybrid MLO approach for better range and speed plus dual frequency synthesizers. The latter delivers faster band switching for mainstream clients,” says James Chen, VP Product & Technology Marketing at MediaTek.
On the AP side MediaTek is now using hardware-based single-MAC architecture instead of legacy multiple MACs communicating on PCIe interfaces (one for each band, see graphic below). The result is 27% higher throughput (using UDP) for a single-MAC Filogic 880-powered tri-band AP compared to a conventional (multiple-MAC) tri-band AP. “Hardware implementations have natural speed and efficiency benefits, which is what we’re taking advantage of here,” James Chen says.
But that’s not all. When an AP is using MLO to send data on two links concurrently, MediaTek has introduced adaptive load balancing also known as smart link dispatch. “The result is a shortened transmission time, which means up to 57% higher throughput under clean channel conditions. When the channels are busy, this feature prevents a 32% throughput degradation,” he says.
On the client side MediaTek is including hybrid MLO for both better range and better speed. This feature adds dynamic band steering to any Wi-Fi band for the eMLSR (enhanced Multi-Link Single Radio) mode while the conventional approach selects only two of three bands. “This makes a big difference, even up to 45% higher throughput when the client is close to the AP. And it adds as much as 10 dB to the link budget at the far end of the range, which means substantially longer range,” James Chen says.
Finally, MediaTek has created a new dual frequency synthesizer design for the Filogic 360 Wi-Fi 7 2×2 MIMO client, allowing it to split into two one-by-one streams for MLO. “This allows the client to lock on the current band and next band for fast switching, which improves signal quality especially when moving around with your phone or other device,” he says. Filogic 360 is designed to power the majority of Wi-Fi clients, including phones, PCs, tablets, and more.
Meanwhile MediaTek’s flagship Wi-Fi 7 client is integrated into the Dimensity 9400 smartphone platform. It supports five streams over three concurrent bands (non-eMLSR) with 2×2 at 2.4 GHz, 2×2 at 5 GHz, and 1×1 at 6 GHz. Top-of-the-line smartphones using the Dimensity 9400 platform include models from Oppo, Vivo, and others – see more here.
For more details on the Single-MAC MLO and Smart Link Dispatch features, also see MediaTek’s library of white papers here.
/Claus.
