Any description of Beaforming occurrences debug information?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Are there any descriptions of Beam-forming occurrences items as below?

/interface w60g print stats
name: wlan60-1
beamforming-event: 310
tx-io-msdu: 0
tx-sw-msdu: 154 663
tx-fw-msdu: 102
tx-ppdu: 220 147
tx-ppdu-from-q: 40 327
tx-mpdu-new: 154 663
tx-mpdu-total: 184 759
tx-mpdu-retry: 30 096
rx-ppdu: 166 636
rx-mpdu-crc-err: 4 817
rx-mpdu-crc-ok: 285 649

2

Sorry, there is no Beamforming in Mikrotiks Wifi SW.

3

Beamforming missing from MIMO capable MikroTik offering ???

No wonder MikroTik Wireless under-perform ?

So its either Beamforming or Spatial Multiplexing … normally part of the wireless driver packaging … and yes it can be disabled or enabled. Very few MIMO clients support Spatial Multiplexing because its expensive to implement BUT Beamforming is very widely supported because its CHEAP … so I am shocked by your comment that there is no Beamforming in Mikrotiks Wifi … SHOCKED.

Must be because Beamforming requires much greater Antenna discipline … nope you cannot interchange Antennas that have been MIMO tuned … so that kills the antenna business.

4

The hardware is good, the problem is that Mikrotik develops its own WiFi driver which doesn’t include all the necessary features to benefit from QCA Wave2 WiFi chipsets.

5

OP was asking specifically about 60G devices, where beamforming IS available (at least on some devices like wAP 60G).

On a broader term, MIMO neither implies nor requires beamforming. Only MU-MIMO does. And none of the Mikrotik devices currently support MU-MIMO, that is a well-known fact.

6

@andriys
Beamforming began to appear in routers back in 2008, with the advent of the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard. 802.11n was the first version of Wi-Fi to support multiple-input multiple-output, or MIMO, technology, which beamforming needs in order to send out multiple overlapping signals.

7

Nope. Spatial multiplexing is NOT beamforming. It is possible to do both (and for MU-MIMO AP is required to do both), but back in 802.11n era only a few vendors actually did that, and those APs were pretty costly. I know Ruckus offered APs with beamforming in those years, but I always assumed they used a custom phase-arrays for that, not just a standard single antenna per chain, as in standard MU-MIMO these years.

8

@andriys
Please learn how to read and inwardly digest. Nowhere did I state that Spatial Multiplexing is Beamforming … grrrr

9

Then what was your reference to 802.11 and MIMO about?

10

Please read carefully http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/any-description-of-beaforming-occurrences-debug-information/139862/9

And a VERY good presentation of https://youtu.be/0O179W5Tbzo

11

Right, I’ve read it again. Please find my comments on it below.


Well… Yes, spatial multiplexing is the technology that MIMO is based on, and that must be implemented/supported by all 802.11n and newer APs and clients with two or more chains. It IS supported by almost all currently available Mikrotik WiFi devices (except single chain devices like Groove, obviously). Beamforming is a requirement for MU-MIMO. Beamforming is NOT generally supported on devices without support for MU-MIMO, with some exceptions.


Wrong. All 802.11n and newer devices (both APs and clients) with two or more chains must support spatial multiplexing. That’s basically how MIMO works.


Wrong. Only a few vendors support beamforming in their 802.11n and 802.11ac wave1 devices, and those devices are usually pretty expensive.

12

Andriys already provided most information but here a more detailed article:
https://www.howtogeek.com/220774/htg-explains-what-is-beamforming-on-a-wireless-router/#:~:text=Explicit%20Beamforming&text=There’s%20also%20%E2%80%9Cimplicit%20beamforming.%E2%80%9D,see%20some%20improvement%2C%20in%20theory.

There are various “beamformings” in Wifi. legacy, implicit, explicit. The only one that really counts is the one
coming with Wave 2 / 11ac as it really gives couple of dB improvements (and continues into Wifi6 with further improvements and OFDMA etc).
In this case both devices (AP and clients) do need to support this feature to make it work (and it does work, when available :wink:)

The older technics (for legacy clients) are pretty much useless.