What Is MU-MIMO?

How does MU-MIMO work?

MU-MIMO allows access points and their many antennas to transmit to multiple client devices at one time. That helps increase airtime efficiency so every client—regardless of what version of 802.11 it is running—gets the amount of airtime it's supposed to get based on the technology supported. A lower-speed client no longer slows the overall downlink throughput for others on the network.

What are the benefits of MU-MIMO?

MU-MIMO's benefits include:

• Fewer bottlenecks. Devices get on and off the network quicker, allowing more devices to be served. 
• Non-orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) devices—those that run 802.11a/b/g/n—will see a bump in performance. Due to the speed of MU-MIMO, Wi-Fi 6 / OFDMA clients will get on and off the network quicker.
• Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 devices are capable of operation in 6 GHz spectrum which further offloads 5 GHz leaving more airtime available for legacy devices.  

What is the difference between MU-MIMO and SU-MIMO?

With single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO), the access point transmits one at a time to each client. MU-MIMO allows the access point to send multiple data packets to multiple clients over the same frequency. This means a lower-speed client won't hold back packet transmissions to other clients. 

Thanks to MU-MIMO, an access point can use its antenna resources to transmit multiple frames to different clients, at the same time over the same frequency spectrum.

Where is MU-MIMO best suited?

MU-MIMO is particularly well suited to bring-your-own-device (BYOD) situations where devices such as smartphones and tablets only have a single antenna. Another instance is in a crowd where a large number of people are using their devices to connect to the same bandwidth.