10Gbps Wireless Transfers

Erasei writes "NTT Science and Core Technology Laboratory Group has developed a wireless communications that is capable of transmitting data at speeds of up to 10Gbps. In order to achieve such high data transmission speeds, the system uses the as-yet-unused 120GHz frequency band. The actual bandwidth the system uses is 17GHz, and the method of modulation employed is amplitude shift keying."

Comments

Any encryption challenges at that speed?

[gregwbrooks]

Pardon my ignorance, but are there additional challenges on real-time encryption when wireless gets that fast?

I'm not thinking so much of a peer-to-peer or client/server setup where there's a networking handshake, but more along the lines of a broadcast data stream meant for everyone (or maybe just a few certain someones) to pick up.

Re:Any encryption challenges at that speed?

[Abcd1234]

Well, if you're planning on doing real-time encryption of that much data, odds are very good you're planning to use a hardware encryption widget of some kind. For example, according to this article, Xilinx has developed an FPGA that implements DES at 10 Gb/s. 'course, I'd imaging there are ASICs out there with even better performance (I only performed a cursory search).

range, penetration and cost?

[bigpat]

"In the laboratory, a 10m range for the system has been confirmed, but NTT is expecting to try and extend the range to 100m."

10 meters would limit its usefulness, but 100 meters would make this very useful. Hopefully, this has a useful range.

Could someone answer the question about how easily this frequency would pass through common substances, like walls?

Also, there was no mention of weather they would seek to license their technology to make this widely available or just make this a very expensive specialized niche product.

Not for the office

[Pedrito]

This isn't office wireless. This is a very line-of-sight system that would be used, probably, between buildings, if they get it go that far, I would imagine.

You'd never see anything like this in a home or office, as it couldn't penetrate a sheet of paper, let alone a wall of any type. I suppose it could penetrate if you put enough power into it, but then it would need enough power to melt through the wall before the communication could begin.

Mad, mad props to the RF guys on this one

[InterruptDescriptorT]

I'm no EE, but I studied enough analog electronics design to know that creating RF circuits at that kind of frequency is no easy feat.

Open up an 802.11 card for instance--these work at about 1/60th of that frequency--and look at the traces for an idea. It's not just what components are connected together--it's the layout of the traces that define most of the circuit. Inductors are little squiggles, a resistor is the thinning of a trace, etc., all of which is highly dependent on frequency.

In other words, these guys are pretty slick and you just have to bow to them.

Re:What range?

[WittyName]

120Ghz? I can not think of an op-amp that works anywhere near the freq. Not to mention a waveguide to get your output to the antenna.

As for omnidirectional, that would lower your effective point to point power further.

At these freq's it could only be useful for point-to-point comms.

I wonder why they did not just leave it all optical.