Network congestion for wireless data.

• Position: Spectrum Crunch

There are few things more frustrating than trying to use your phone on a crowded network. With phone usage growing faster than wireless spectrum, we all are fighting over smaller and smaller bits of bandwidth.

Researchers from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., say that they have a possible solution. In a paper, a team led by Dina Katabi, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Wireless Center, demonstrates a system called MegaMIMO 2.0 that can transfer wireless data more than three times faster than existing systems while also doubling the range of the signal.

The system's key insight is to coordinate multiple access points at the same time, on the same frequency, without creating interference. This means that MegaMIMO 2.0 dramatically could improve the speed and strength of wireless networks, particularly at high-usage events like concerts, conventions, and sporting events.

"In today's wireless world, you can't solve spectrum crunch by throwing more transmitters at the problem, because they will all still be interfering with one another," says lead author and Ph.D. student Ezzeldin Harried. "The answer is to have all those access points work with each other simultaneously to efficiently use the available spectrum."

The main reason that your smartphone works so speedily is multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), which means that it uses several transmitters and receivers at the same time. Radio waves bounce off surfaces and therefore arrive at the receivers at slightly different times...