Ubiquitous Multi-Gigabit Wireless Within Three Years

Anonymous Howard passed us a link to the Press Escape blog, and a post about the future of ultra-fast wireless connectivity. Georgia Tech researchers unveiled plans to use ultra-high frequency radio transmissions to achieve very high data transmission rates over short distances. In a few years, the article says, we'll have ubiquitous multi-gigabit wireless connectivity, with some significant advances already under their belts. "GEDC team have already achieved wireless data-transfer rates of 15 gigabits per second (Gbps) at a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gbps at 2 meters and 5 Gbps at 5 meters. 'The goal here is to maximize data throughput to make possible a host of new wireless applications for home and office connectivity,' said Prof. Joy Laskar, GEDC director and lead researcher on the project along with Stephane Pinel. Pinel is confident that Very high speed, p2p data connections could be available potentially in less than two years. The research could lead to devices such as external hard drives, laptop computers, MP-3 players, cell phones, commercial kiosks and others could transfer huge amounts of data in seconds while data centers could install racks of servers without the customary jumble of wires."

Comments

Call me a luddite, but...

[tjstork]

I have this weird feeling that pervasive, high frequency radio needed to make wireless work is going to wind up with some unforseen bad side effect, the same way every other technology that we used too much had. My concern is that we lack the science to even understand the implications of all of this radiation we're creating upon our environment. Sure, you can put a frog in a box next to a wireless system and say, "oh, the frog lived", or jack up the energy by 100 times as some sort of a proxy for exposure over time, and say "the frog did not get cancer", but that's not really the same as saying that we will now saturate the biosphere with radiation of our own making.

Re:Call me a luddite, but...

[Urza9814]

Great analogy there with the 'it's safer than standing outside on a sunny day'. Yea. It'll burn me and give me skin cancer then?

First of all, with those kinds of speeds, I'm not sure this will be a very low power device. I admit I didn't RTFA and didn't look into how it works, but I'm thinking it's gotta use many frequencies. Sure, one 60 watt bulb might not hurt you, but a large group of them could cause some problems. Plus, if it is low power, that has it's own problems. When you get hit by a large dose of radiation, there are many things your body does to protect itself. When you get slowly cooked by a continuous small dose, none of that happens. Your body doesn't protect itself against low levels of radiation.

Basically, I wouldn't want to be around these things. But then, I don't trust my cellphone much either after seeing studies linking cell phones in pockets to testicular cancer.

Oh, and I'm not sure about other countries, but in the US safety regs for radiation are based only on heat produced by the waves, when there are other ways they cause damage. Studies have shown cells can be damaged by waves 60 times weaker than what the government says is safe.

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[posys]

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