Wi-Fi Spatial streaming or multiplexing (often shortened to SM or SMX) is a transmission technique used in MIMO wireless communication to transmit independent and separately coded data signals, so called streams, from each of the multiple transmit antennas.

8 spatial streams
802.11ac will support up to 160MHz channel bonding and up to 8 spatial streams.

When wireless signals are being transmitted or received simultaneously in a MIMO environment, the signals being transmitted by the various antennae are multiplexed by using different spaces within the same spectral channel. These spaces are known as spatial streams.

A 3×3 MIMO device with 3 antennas and radios is capable of transmitting and receiving via three streams. All these streams afford the device more bandwidth capacity when downloading and uploading data to and from the wireless network. The same goes for wireless.

In each WiFi standard, starting with 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4), the total throughput of a router’s WiFi speed was a function of how many streams it employs. So, if you had a 4-stream router, you could get up to 4*150Mbps = 600Mbps. To get this maximum, you had to have a device with a 4-stream radio onboard.

802.11n defines only four spatial streams maximum.

two spatial streams
The IEEE 802.16m MU-MIMO supports up to two spatial streams with two transmit-antennas and up to four spatial streams for four and eight transmit antennas.

What does 3×3 mean? It is common to see AP product descriptions with 2×2 or 3×3. The first number is the number of transmit antennas while the second number refers to the number of receive antennas. There are two radios – one for the 2.4 GHz transmissions, and one for the 5 GHz transmissions.

The more streams a router has, the more data it can send to your devices and receive from them. A higher number of streams increases the reliability and speed of your network. As a result, your client devices still benefit even if they don’t support 8 streams.

Type of Device and How it’s Being Used Ideally, you should use the 2.4GHz band to connect devices for low bandwidth activities like browsing the Internet. On the other hand, 5GHz is the best suited for high-bandwidth devices or activities like gaming and streaming HDTV.

Wi-Fi Spatial streaming or multiplexing (often shortened to SM or SMX) is a transmission technique used in MIMO wireless communication to transmit independent and separately coded data signals, so called streams, from each of the multiple transmit antennas.

Three Spatial Streams: The Good, Bad, and Ugly. Three Spatial Streams: The Good, Bad, and Ugly. To date, three enterprise vendors (Aruba, HP, Meraki) have announced new three spatial stream APs (3×3:3), and others will follow.

Additional antennas allow for the transmission and reception of multiple simultaneous data streams. Each spatial stream can pack a certain amount of data with 802.11ac wireless. More transmitters and receivers allow the AP to send independent streams of data.

Spatial streaming or spatial multiplexing is a MIMO technique that is used to transmit independent streams to single or multiple receivers simultaneously. The keywords are independent streams and simultaneously.