What’s the max number of spatial streams supported by the MM6108? Are there near term plans to increase it? And lastly, is it possible to increase the number of spatial streams with an external FEM?
Thank you
Hi there, the MM6108 is a SISO device, so you get one spatial stream for Rx, and one for Tx. There are currently no MIMO Wi-Fi HaLow devices on the market.
You won’t be able to add MIMO functionality to a SISO chip with external components as it requires separate radios and phy’s for each spatial stream in the chip. Because of this MIMO chips are bigger & consume more power, and as such, typically not used for IoT devices.
What are you trying to achieve with MIMO? Do you need more throughput or longer range? You could look at some other options, incl directional antennas, or using multiple chips and using different channels.
Hey Michael, thanks for the detailed response. That makes sense. The goal is higher throughput so will look into other options.
If the goal is higher throughput at range, than I’d suggest looking at higher output modules, which will give you a better link budget and as such a higher MCS rate / throughput than you might be getting today. Note that Quectel just announced their new 27dBm module, see Wi-Fi HaLow FGH100M-H | Quectel