I have few practical questions regarding classic home routers like TP-Link Archer C2 or modern AX10. I welcome longer explanations if it's necessary.
Which type of antennas do home routers use?
Are the "black pointy things attached to home routers" basic dipole antennas?
How does home router use its antennas?
Let's consider router that has 2 antennas (like C2). Does each of them send or receive data (not at the same time) or 1 of them is used for receiving and the second one for sending data.
How does router take advantage of multiple antennas?
For example, let's say there is 1 device connected via Wifi to router that has 2 antennas (like C2). Does the router use only 1 antenna that is closer to the device, or is the communication somehow split and both antennas are used at the same time. If both antennas are used, is one antenna assigned for each device (communication), or can the communication with just one device use multiple antennas as well?
How does MU-MIMO use multiple antennas?
Do I understand it correctly that MU-MIMO takes advantage of multiple antennas by assigning a pair of antennas for each device (or communication stream) for uplink and downlink allowing multiple simultaneous communications? So if the router has 4 antennas, it allows basically 2x2 MIMO, one per each antenna pair. Archer AX10 supports only 2x2 MIMO and it has 4 antennas, so the theory fits.
However, Archer AX20 has 4 antennas as well and it supports 4x4 MIMO. How is it possible?
Is beamforming tied to MIMO?
Is beamforming basically forcing a stronger signal by one antenna in the direction of MIMO device like mobile phone connected to Wifi? Or is it more general and also supported by routers without MIMO, so basically fast switching the direction for each transmitted frame.
