A Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) system has multiple antennas and multiple radios. It takes advantage of multipath effects, where a transmitted signal arrives at the receiver through a number of different paths. Each path can have a different time
Usually multipath is a source of interference, but MIMO systems use the fact that data will arrive at the receiver at different times through different paths to improve the quality of the data link. For example, rather than relying on a single antenna path to receive an entire message, the message can be pieced together based on fragments received at the various antennas. This can act to either increase the data rate at a given range, or increase system range for a given data rate.
MIMO is used in the implementation of the 802.11n standard.
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