What Is Beam Steering?

Beam steering is a method radio transmitters use to focus their radio energy in a particular direction, typically at the station they are communicating with although a directional antenna may sometimes bounce it's signal off a hard survace and then towards the receiving station in order to avoid a source of interference.  Ruckus Wireless access points may do this.

When you aim your signal at a station, you also increase the power of the signal, known more accurately as gain.  This amplification is simply radio waves being concentrated in one direction, it's passive gain as opposed to active gain from a power amplifier.  It's worth noting than an antenna that has gain when transmitting, also has gain when receiving a signal.  This is why you need fewer Ruckus access points (as much as 40% fewer) than other brands because Ruckus Beamsteering not only throws the APs signal farther, it also can hear weak signal stations at greater distances.

A Ruckus access point performs Beam Steering on a per packet, per station basis.  This means that if you walk around the room with your laptop, the data signal is following you as you move around.  Ruckus has patented a form of Beam Steering they call BeamFlex.  In future articles we'll talk more about BeamFlex and why it's superior to the phased array system used by Cisco...