Hey guys, I’m planning to get a Chateau PRO ax as Home wAP but as much as specs on Mikrotik product page look promising there are lack of info as well, As the chipset itself supports Beamforming and OFDMA, are these implemented in HW and RouterOS also ? Could they be turned off (For Example turning off beamforming might help better MU-MIMO throughout put ?!!)? any settings for them in RouterOS ?
Block diagram shows that Chateau Pro uses “simple” 4x4MIMO. It does allow for “slight” beamforming if antenna geometry is right (but such antenna geometry would hinder MIMO performance). OTOH beamforming is one of basics for well-performing MU-MIMO because it reduces interference between MUs. All in all, I wouldn’t expect to see too much of a difference between 2x2 AX and 4x4 AX when using usual 2x2 stations. If, OTOH, you have some 4x4 station, then it would probably disable MU-MIMO during airtime dedicated to that station. And for activation of MU-MIMO … stations have to support it as well (even if it’s active only in DL direction), if they don’t then no MU-MIMO. Beamforming is different, it can ve used to “project” higher power in direction of station without station doing something fancy. But then this appears as increase in antenna gain which should not result in excessive EIRP … so go figure how beamforming actually works.
Yes That’s right, MU-MIMO does rely on beamforming and in case of this router 4x4 SU-MIMO is supported which in case of SU-MIMO the experience i had was that disabling beamforming would have helped me not to lose signal strength on my fixed station while other nodes moving around with some Tenda wAP i had
So, Still confused if beamforming could be disabled or not in RouterOS ? and it seems not to be there any section about it in docs
No, ROS doesn’t expose any of low-level tweaks perhaps available from (OEM’s) drivers.