Even though we can enjoy Wi-Fi access almost everywhere nowadays, it’s not exactly easy to get decent speeds all of the time, particularly during important events such as concerts, sports competitions or conferences, to say nothing of busy airports. That’s because multiple wireless routers installed to deliver internet access to everyone can create interference, which in turn causes frustratingly low download speeds. Nobody likes that, right? Fortunately, it looks like the MIT team is currently working on a solution, at least judging by a recently submitted paper. The project would focus on figuring out new a method for managing networks that could cause the routers to collaborate better, all thanks to a series of algorithms.
These algorithms would process a router’s signal in order to allow multiple devices to send information on the same wireless spectrum without any interference, and early testing looks promising as the researchers managed to obtain data transfer speeds that were 3.3 times as fast as usual. According to Ezzeldin Hussein Hamed, one of the MIT researchers, these transfer speeds could actually become ten times faster than usual, but it’s worth noting that all testing sessions were done in a laboratory so far. The tests relied on laptops that were placed on Roomba robots in order to mimic how people move during large gatherings. Right now, it’s too early to say when these algorithms will make their way into production routers, but the whole project is definitely a step in the right direction.
