Technology

1,  Wi-Fi 6: Which router should you choose?

2,  Evolution of router antenna technology

3,  The effectiveness of MIMO technology and the number of antennas

4,  Dual-antenna technology: Taking advantage of two frequency bands

5,  The truth about the number of antennas and actual performance

Wi-Fi 6 and router choices

As Wi-Fi6 enters the public’s field of vision, many people worry about changing routers. In the market, ASUS, Netgear, Huawei, and TP-link familiar brand name products are all sold on major e-commerce platforms to support Wi-Fi 6 routing. Support for Wi-Fi 6 routing has advantages such as reduced latency and increased Wi-Fi speed. However, consumers often notice that some Wi-Fi 6 routers feature a greater number of WiFi router antennas — leading to the question: does having more antennas really mean better performance?

Evolution of router antenna technology

In 1997, the first wireless local area network standard IEEE802.11 was born, a standard for wireless network communication defined by the International Society of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. At the same time, wireless routers were born. The wireless local area network standard ushered in a period of rapid update and iteration. The biggest change is the increasing number of antennas in routers, from the original one antenna to two, three, four, etc. . But why does the antenna of a wireless router change more and more?

The effectiveness of MIMO technology and the number of antennas

MIMO (Multi-input Multi-output) technology has been supported in the wireless networking field since the IEEE 802.11n standard update in 2009. This technology enables multiple antennas to receive and transmit data simultaneously, allowing more data packets to be delivered at higher speeds. The emergence of advanced MIMO antenna design has further improved transmission efficiency, significantly reducing latency and enhancing overall network capacity. For example, early single-antenna routers offered around 54 Mbit/s, while modern MIMO routers can reach up to 150 Mbit/s or more — and the rate scales with the number of antennas. It’s similar to the saying, “strength in numbers.” So, does that mean the more antennas, the better?

Dual-antenna technology and performance

In 2012, the 802.11ac standard was updated and the router transmission rate was increased to a new high 433Mbit/s while supporting up to 8 splits, that is the transmission of eight front lines. They correspond to two different signals for the 2.4GHz signal and the 5 GHz signal. 2.4GHz has a wider coverage, but the signal easily interferes and the speed is relatively slow. The signal transmission speed of 5GHz is faster and is not easy to interfere with, but the signal penetration is slightly worse. In order to take into account the respective advantages of these two frequency bands, a dual-frequency router is used to transmit these two signals at the same time. Two different antenna technologies are used: a single-frequency antenna, one antenna transmits one signal; a dual-frequency antenna, one A single antenna emits two kinds of signals.

The truth about the number of antennas and actual performance

Is there any difference between single antenna routing, dual-antenna routing, three-wire four-wire, or even more? Yes, but the impact on the actual use process is not large, including signal coverage, signal strength, and the antenna speed is even more nonsense. Aside from the rare single antenna, the remaining “multi-antenna” is just the “medium” or “tool” for MIMO technology. The difference lies in the architecture used: common dual-antenna products mainly use 1T2R or 2T2R, 3T3R or 3T3R is used in the three-antenna product.

In theory, increasing the number of antennas will reduce signal coverage blind spots, but we have verified through a large number of evaluations that this difference is completely negligible in an ordinary home environment. Moreover, just like the built-in antenna does not lose the external one, the three-antenna coverage is not as good as the two-antenna coverage, and the product quality is also an important factor in the final analysis.