Forgive me I am sure this has been asked and answered but I haven't been able to find it with a search.
Is there anything in the roadmap for improvments on the 2.4ghz (USA) side? Lilke a lot of the rural providers we have a large amount of customers on 2.4 and are looking to the future planning for the network for more bandwidth. 5ghz isnt an option even with micro pops.
So is there any 450pmp or ePMP options coming down the line for 2.4?
Nothing on the PMP450 front... there's some hope for a 2.4GHz AX-based update in the ePMP line. The more people that ask for it... the more likely Cambium is to develop it.
Hi Brandon, what types of improvements would you be looking for? As a whole, 2.4GHz technology really peaked with 802.11n with not much being introduced at a global level. There is also the limitation of spectrum. Depending on the type of improvement you are looking to see, using more AP's with smaller sector antennas (i.e. RF Element horns) might be a good way to get more capacity and higher speeds (or just coexist with the limited spectrum). Personally, until more spectrum can be allocated, I don't think any of the chipset manufactures, IEEE workgroups, and radio manufacturers see value in throwing resources at the spectrum. That's just a personal opinion, not necessarily an official Cambium statement.
For ePMP, since it is WiFi chipset based, it's pretty much maxed out from a technology perspective. Beamforming might be nice, but isn't really in the chipset. Also, the modulations are fixed.
For PMP450, the product is FPGA based, and leverages the same technology used across the PMP450 platform (layer 2 scheduler). Any improvements done to the lower level protocol (i.e. additional modulation encodings, or forward error correction techniques, etc.) would apply to all PMP450 devices. But, just like ePMP, there isn't anything specifically being looked at for 2.4GHz, just, in general, across the platform.
If you have specific ideas that you would like to see (or that other competitors are doing), I would encourage you to post them. We have an 'Ideas' forum for general product feature requests or enhancements. Something like a dual band PMP450m (2.4 and 5GHz) would be cool, but I don't really know if that is even technically feasible. What type of improvement would help you?
As Eric mentioned, 802.11 AX (AKA WiFi 6) was/is designed for the 2.4Ghz band as well as the 5Ghz band. Several chip manufactures have had AX chips out since 2017, and possibly before. There are many AX SOHO routers on the market now.
AX would be a game changer for ePMP at 2.4Ghz as it uses OFDMA which allows the the overall channel width (20Mhz, 40Mhz, etc) to be broken down into smaller sub-channels known as RU's (Resource Units). These sub-channels can be used to "talk" to more SM's at one time, in both DL and UL, not just DL as current AC gear is limited. MU-MIMO can also be ran concurrently with the RU's to increase throughput and latency. These RU's can also help with interference and increase range (on paper anyway). Oh, and the AX chips modulate up to 1024qam, which will be hard to reach at 2.4Ghz, but nice to know the ability is there.
While the N (1000/2000) product line is pretty much tapped out, I personally can not see Cambium not using 802.11 AX to transform 2.4Ghz PtMP. Especially since Cambium will already be releasing an AX product (4000 series) for 5Ghz and if everything goes well with the FCC, I would suspect for 6Ghz as well.
I do not know about anyone else, but an AX 2.4Ghz ePMP PtMP solution, would be just that, a very likely solution to many of the problems we have at 2.4Ghz.
I certainly hope so... it was my understanding from talking to Cambium folks that the ePMP 4000 will be 2.4 and 5Ghz. They said it'll be backwards compatible with the Force200 (2.4Ghz) installations, as well as the Force300 (5Ghz) installations we are currenly doing.
The main problem with Cambium 2.4 Ghz right now isn't the performance - it's the rediculous price of the APs. All the ePMP AP's are too expensive and act as a barrier to adoption, but the 2.4Ghz 1000's are not only more expensive than all competitors in the similar segment, but also more expensive than the entry level 2000 and 3000 series APs.
Anyway - we've been very, very pleased with the performance of Cambium's 2.4Ghz product, and I wish they were priced reasonably enough to allow us to deploy them everwhere. I certainly hope (and eagerly look forward to) the ePMP4000 being both 2.4 and 5Ghz capable.
Hi,
@CWB wrote:
Several chip manufactures have had AX chips out since 2017, and possibly before. There are many AX SOHO routers on the market now.
Couple comments from my side:
1. 802.11ax is not yet ratified as a standard. For the timeline you can check here http://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm#tgax
It means that there are no Wi-Fi6 certified devices just yet.
2. Chipset manufactures were announcing chipsets since 2017 while 11ax chipsets became comercially available in 2018. With the early adopters releasing home routers by the end of 2018.
3. None of the SOHO routers specify which subset of 11ax features are supported.
4. Without 11ax subscribers none of the SOHO routers can showoff most of the 11ax benefits.
AX would be a game changer for ePMP at 2.4Ghz as it uses OFDMA which allows the the overall channel width (20Mhz, 40Mhz, etc) to be broken down into smaller sub-channels known as RU's (Resource Units). These sub-channels can be used to "talk" to more SM's at one time, in both DL and UL, not just DL as current AC gear is limited. MU-MIMO can also be ran concurrently with the RU's to increase throughput and latency. These RU's can also help with interference and increase range (on paper anyway). Oh, and the AX chips modulate up to 1024qam, which will be hard to reach at 2.4Ghz, but nice to know the ability is there.
By the 11ax standard MU-MIMO and OFDMA are mutually exclusive features so you can have one or another. You either do MU-MIMO transmission or OFDMA transmission, but not the MU-MIMO with the subset of RUs. Also in theory OFDMA can help with interference only if you know the RUs affected by interference.
Dmitry
@Dmitry Moiseev wrote:Hi,
@CWB wrote:Several chip manufactures have had AX chips out since 2017, and possibly before. There are many AX SOHO routers on the market now.
Couple comments from my side:
1. 802.11ax is not yet ratified as a standard. For the timeline you can check here http://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm#tgax
It means that there are no Wi-Fi6 certified devices just yet.
2. Chipset manufactures were announcing chipsets since 2017 while 11ax chipsets became comercially available in 2018. With the early adopters releasing home routers by the end of 2018.
3. None of the SOHO routers specify which subset of 11ax features are supported.4. Without 11ax subscribers none of the SOHO routers can showoff most of the 11ax benefits.
AX would be a game changer for ePMP at 2.4Ghz as it uses OFDMA which allows the the overall channel width (20Mhz, 40Mhz, etc) to be broken down into smaller sub-channels known as RU's (Resource Units). These sub-channels can be used to "talk" to more SM's at one time, in both DL and UL, not just DL as current AC gear is limited. MU-MIMO can also be ran concurrently with the RU's to increase throughput and latency. These RU's can also help with interference and increase range (on paper anyway). Oh, and the AX chips modulate up to 1024qam, which will be hard to reach at 2.4Ghz, but nice to know the ability is there.
By the 11ax standard MU-MIMO and OFDMA are mutually exclusive features so you can have one or another. You either do MU-MIMO transmission or OFDMA transmission, but not the MU-MIMO with the subset of RUs. Also in theory OFDMA can help with interference only if you know the RUs affected by interference.
Dmitry
Thanks for all the up to date information. I had read some technical white papers some time ago. Cisco and National Instruments used wording that seemed to me to say MU-MIMO and OFDMA could be used simultaneously. I do remember one of the papers was from 2017 so maybe that was the case and it has now changed. You are the expert and I trust your knowledge.
At any rate,...... if for 2.4Ghz Cambium would take the ratified AX standard chips and maybe just use the MU-MIMO feature, if even keeping max modulation to MCS 7, you would make a lot of us 2.4Ghz users happy. A nice path to migration like the 3000 series has done for 5Ghz.
We pretty much stopped installing new 2.4Ghz customers due to noise at the towers even in really rural areas where there is nothing for miles to explain where the noise is coming from. Alsways seemed to me that if there was ever a frequency that needed Beam Forming/Steering it's 2.4Ghz. At least for us the 5Ghz CPE's being able to use PTP power for links is more than good enough but 2.4Ghz needed all the help it could get.
@CWB wrote:
Cisco and National Instruments used wording that seemed to me to say MU-MIMO and OFDMA could be used simultaneously.
My understanding is (was?) that while those two features can't be used at the exact same instant on the same client simultaneously, but that the AP can use them each on different clients... or that the AP can determine which is beneficial to use and switch between them, so in that sense - yes - it can use them ''at the same time'' is my understanding. But perhaps that's just my understanding of some ambiguous wording too? @Dmitry, are you saying that 11AX AP's will needs to be set up in either MU-MIMO mode or in OFDMA mode, and that it'll be ''hard coded'' in that mode, with no ability to use the opposing mode? Or are you saying that it can use them both 'on the fly', so that it can pick either/or (but not technically both at the same instant)?
Hi,
The AP can use either MU-MIMO transmission or OFDMA transmission in one moment of time. AP should pick the optimal mode for each transmission automatically.
Thanks,
Dmitry
I just re-read this thread, and I’m still hoping that there will be 2.4ghz AX based gear coming down the ePMP pipeline.
I know the band is overused, but in rural area with trees, we’ve had good luck reaching the otherwise unreachable. An AX based 2.4 solution would validate choosing Cambium. 
Agreed. We operate where its about as rural as it gets with significant tree coverage and 5.7 isn’t much use as there is very little clear line of site. We’re lucky to hit 15 percent of the customer in any location with 5.7.
We are forced to use a combination of epmp 2.4 and PMP 450i 900 to reach our customers. Some testing with the 3 Ghz band has shown it simply does not have enough NLOS penetration for our needs.
We are definitely in the market for something with more capacity and noise mitigation in these bands.