PCTEL, Inc. announced that it developed a reference antenna system for a major 802.11ax Wi-Fi chipset manufacturer. The 802.11ax chipset is the next evolution of the Wi-Fi standard, designed to serve a wide variety of high-throughput devices in dense user environments. PCTEL’s reference design enables 802.11ax access points to take full advantage of the chipset’s capabilities. PCTEL’s engineers are among the first to develop an antenna system truly optimized for 802.11ax. With a properly optimized antenna system, an 802.11ax access point can produce up to a 4x increase in overall capacity. 802.11ax utilizes complex antenna arrays covering both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, enabling 8x8 MU-MIMO (Multi-User MIMO) on both uplink and downlink. PCTEL’s design also provides high isolation between antenna elements and uniform omnidirectional coverage for dual 5 GHz radios, further increasing the number of devices that can be served reliably by a single access point. PCTEL’s engineers leveraged the company’s laboratory capabilities to design and test an antenna system that works seamlessly with the manufacturer’s chipset and access point reference design.