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CSIRO Demonstrates Fastest Wireless Link Yet
rob101 writes "The CSIRO yesterday demonstrated the world's 'fastest' wireless radio link by transmitting sixteen full quality DVD streams over a 250m link and only using a quarter of the available bandwidth. 'The CSIRO ICT Centre today announced that it has achieved over six gigabits per second over a point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4bits/s/Hz) ever achieved for such a system.'" CSIRO hopes to double the speed of this connection in the future, pushing twelve gigabits a second.
I know you're just joking, but to clear up a common misconception, your microwave oven operates at 2.5GHz, which is why it interferes with current wifi stuff.
This technology operates at 85GHz, which is still in the microwave/radar band of the EM spectrum, so it's likely to interfere with radars.
Well, according to one page I found, the Library of Congress is (was?) around 10 Terabytes. Google says that equals 83,886,080 Megabits. Wikipedia says that DVD video can run at 9.8 Megabits/second using MPEG-2. So, my calculation is: (9.8 * 16) / 83886080 = 0.00000186920166 LOC/s. (Here's hoping I didn't make some stupid 2:30am math mistake here... :))
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Only to realise that the extremely high frequency is ionizing my head...
Actually, I wouldn't worry about ionizing radiation as those only start at frequencies above visible light.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Multiply the frequency of the channel being transmitted on by 2.4 and you get the bit rate. Supposing you were transmitting on 2.434 GHz you could get about 5.8 Gbit/s one way. at 85GHz thats 204 Gbit/s. Mind you this is not your actual sustainable data rate. You would likely be limited to 1/4th to 1/10th this by noise, packet overhead, latency issues, etc. A this kind of frequency anything getting in the line of site can kill your signal, of course, your signal can likely kill anything staying too long in the beam as well. I don't really even understand how you can encode 2.4 bits per Hz, cause thats a bit much data to be packing into a single oscillation.
Disclaimer: I am not a HAM, or anything approaching an EE, just someone who likes math / science.
It's also a extremely good counter example to the small government argument that the private sector can always do anything better/more efficiently.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
Radio comms has been a productive area of reasearch at CSIRO for decades. Politicians who ignore them are the ones who waste MY tax dollars. There are many examples that defend the CSIRO's enviable reputation for genuine science without political "fear or favour", ie a "model public service" (as opposed to the non-existant "perfected public service" or the ever present "public propoganda service").
To give an example of just one "public service": The CSIRO were the first to demonstrate to the world that radiation from atmoshperic testing of nukes was ending up as plutonium and other RA trace elements in childrens bones (MY bones considering the era). They found out by starting with an agricultural study into sheep near an Australian test site run by the Brit's and found the bombs were adding to a rapidly growing planet wide "haze" of radioactive dust.
Obviously they were not popular with the politicians of the day when their extrodinary claim was promptly backed with extrodinary evidence.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Cost of the LCD screens. I'm not joking.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec