NTT develops a cooperative WLAN with distributed smart antenna

NTT has developed a technology its calling “cooperative wireless LAN with distributed smart antenna system (D-SAS)” to improve connectivity in high-density environments such as sports stadiums.

The technology consists of two key functions: one performs centralized radio resource management by taking information about the surrounding radio environment into consideration; the second optimizes parameters dynamically with the aid of the first function so that the interference is reduced at each AP.

NTT has tested the technology at NACK5 stadium in Omiya, Japan with the deployment of about 150 APs under stadium seats. All 11 channels available on the 5.47-5.725 GHz band (i.e., the W56 band) were used and the channel bandwidths of all APs were 20 MHz in both settings.

NTT said its testing showed that its cooperative wireless LAN technology with D-SAS achieved throughput twice than that obtained with the conventional technology.