Turbo Codes Promise Better Wireless Transmission

captain igor writes "IEEE is running a story about two French professors that have created a new class of encoding, called 'Turbo Codes,' that will allow engineers to pass almost twice as much data through a given communications channel, or equivalently, the same amount of data at half the power. The new codes allow the Shannon Limit (the theoretical maximum capacity of a channel) to be approached to, currently, within .5 dB. Scientists hope that this breakthrough will revolutionize wireless communications, especially with the coming reclamation of large swaths of the EM spectrum." As the article points out, such codes are in use now, but seem poised for much wider implementation.

Comments

Then maybe you can explain something to me

[Atario]

Are any of these things being use in cell phones right now?

If so, why does hold music (but never speech) always get little half-second blocks of pink noise interspersed when listening on one?