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Scientists Twist Radio Beams To Send Data At 32 Gigabits Per Second
concertina226 writes Scientists from three international universities have succeeded in twisting radio beams in order to transfer data at the speed of 32 gigabits per second, which is 30 times faster than 4G LTE wireless technology in use today. The researchers, led by Alan Willner, an electrical engineering professor with the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, successfully demonstrated data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5m of free space in a basement laboratory.
"Mom, could you come in here please?"
captcha : mockery
Something tells me it's probably like +80dB, while real world conditions will expect -40dB. :-)
Should have used optical fibre.
transfer data at the speed of 32 gigabits per second, which is 30 times faster than 4G LTE wireless technology in use today.
Exactly which carrier offers gigabit 4G LTE?
the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, successfully demonstrated data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5m of free space in a basement laboratory.
They would have tried for 10m, but Mom and Dad told them that the street lights were on, and their little friends would have come up from the basement and go home.
Millimeter wave causes tissue heating among other things. I'd like to see some studies before I sit beside a 300ghz router.
Yeah, I could do with one of those office-space meme's right now.
If all the nay-sayers faux-gasping at the extreme length of 2.5m could shut up, that'd be great.
I'm not sure what people expect these days - this is a major achievement - whether it *can* be extended, or whether it *will* be extended would be different achievements. You could almost apply Jackson's rules of optimisation to this (refresher below) - in that first you *do* it, and only then (if you're an expert) do you try to do it *well*.
Simon
Jackson's rules of optimisation: "The First Rule of Program Optimization: Don't do it. The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!): Don't do it yet."
Physicists get Hadrons!
I notice from the diagram (per the linked story) that I only need to fit a spiral phase plate (no, not a flux capacitor) to my Tardis and it all works automagically...
... via "orbital angular momentum" and "OAM multiplexing".
Frankly, I am still confused as to why it's not (more simply) "circular polarisation" that has been known about since the early days of radio.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
How long until it is used as a medium for porn? lol.
what do you think the data sent as a test was...
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
cellular telecom companies salivate at finding new ways to extract money from customer bank accounts at ten times the previous maximum speed...
All you game-playing denizens of your parent's basements rejoice! Just make sure you're within 2.5m of the transmitter and life will be good...
With a range of, "from head to toe" and it only works 6 feet under the ground.
Oh I bet people will be dying to try that out.
Better get working on the RFC for it.
Being her basement and all.
What medium, on the market, could even support speeds like this, or is it just good for volume to multiple devices?
Well, there seems to be a lot of information missing, but I'm suspecting that when they talk about twisting the radio signal they don't just mean static circular polarization, they mean that they are dynamically twisting it variable amounts as a way to modulate the data signal onto it. This would be similar to the modulation techniques used back in the last millennium to squeeze far more data down an audio like than the audio bandwidth would imply could be transmitted.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It's been shown that all these "helical" polarization schemes are degenerate forms of MIMO essentially, and can't achieve speeds better then what MIMO antenna configurations can.
At short distances in quiet environments, you can do a heck of a lot which will never, ever work anywhere but in that experiment.
from the diagram, it looks to be a directional antennae.
if you are doing that with radio waves... why not a laser?
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
It's still modulation, modulation creates sidebands, and sidebands require bandwidth.
Nothing has changed, the Shannon–Hartley theorem still rules.
Nice diagram of a left-facing swastika in the article - or is that a southern-hemisphere hurricane?
will the radiation from these new, high speed radio transmissions become harmful to humans?
Yeah, the first trial should be to mars. Because that would be damn handy. I can see applications for even shorter distances. Instead of having exposed contacts on things (usb memories, for example) you just put them close to the computer. Also many instrumentation applications would be ok with 2.5m range.
This is a myth. There is nothing special about 2.4 GHz as far as water is concerned. There is a mild absorption peak at 24 GHz, but nothing at 2.4.
Mr scientist's private collection?
It only took half an hour!
Yeah, more politics! Less of that nerdy tech stuff! What do they think we are, a bunch of geeks who get excited by things like communications technologies and networking?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
sounds a whole lot better than "my mom's basement". I think I'll start using that.
So, you're an idiot who doesn't think an advance in the field of communications is newsworthy for nerds?
You really are a moron.
Dude, seriously, if you want to include your job title in your signature, do it at work.
We're not impressed, we all have our own job titles.
Nobody here gives a fuck about your job title, it doesn't make you less of an idiot when you post.
It makes you a pompous douchebag.
According to my colleague, who is more expert at electromagnetics than I am, this could only ever work over small distances (or over fibre). You have to capture most of the entire wavefront.
It would make him a pompous douchebag if he had an impressive job title, like astronaut. Now it just makes him a douchebag.
How long until it is used as a medium for porn? lol.
what do you think the data sent as a test was...
Perhaps you are refering to Lena Soderberg?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_S%C3%B6derberg
My porn collection would only take a couple minutes to transmit at this speed!
Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
And just to really get people excited, you can give the signal another "twist", and another, and another - "HEY! It looks like we can achieve infinite bandwidth!!"
Along with using infinite spectrum and requiring infinite power
This really isn't anything all that new. Hams have been using phase change modes for around 15 years now. Some of these modes, like PSK-31, allow worldwide communications using tiny amounts of power.
But see that "31"? That's the baud rate. It was chosen because that is about the rate that a decent typist can type. Mighty slow.
But it's all scalable, There are much higher rates available. But they all have a price of bandwidth, and the signal needs to be all that much better. Read that as higher transmitting power. There are a few really clever modes, like "MultiPSK, which achieve a higher transmission rate by multiple 2 phase transmissions. They require less power to transmit, but take up some more bandwidth, and the software is more complex because all the separate signals have to be recombined.
The biggest ability of these "OhmaGawd" super transmission systems we hear about a few times a year is to attract dollars for more research.
Final? The system can work as long as they don't try to stuff too much into it. But I doubt in the present day form. Think a big increase in the number of cell towers, an overhaul of wi-fi devices. Note: I haven't seen the bandwidth needed, so am not certain, but this might mean less available channels for wifi devices.
No free lunch here kids.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Senior Lead Astronaut, that would impress even chicks.
"Contrary to popular belief, UNIX is user friendly. It just happens to be selective on who it makes friendship with"
And the implied point is the same: 60 dB away from practical means a factor of million improvement is still needed.
I come here for the love
This is like QAM? I recall back in the late 1980's some AM broadcasters had played around with Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. In essence twisting the phase of the carrier around to get channeling, etc.
How do you look for a twisted data transmission from the stars?
Interesting and a good start but . . .
(Hard to tell clearly from the two articles but) these seem to use feed horns of a specific design and configuration (microwave transmissions usually do), that must be POINTED AT the receiver feed horn, so . . . if anyone is planning on "just plopping down the laptop" in any old orientation . . . it won't line up the transmission signals. Sure, for a trunk line between sites (buildings/planets) where critical alignment can be achieved . . . it'll work fine.
And some of the comments below seem confused . . . its not "faster" . . . its a "bigger pipeline". If it takes (on average, depending on planet position) 12.5 minutes for a signal to "reach mars" . . . it will still take 12.5 minutes. The signal won't "go faster" to get there in 6 minutes. When they say "faster" they mean . . . once the signal crosses the 12.5 minute distance . . . you can pump a higher bandwidth of data on that signal. But we won't be using this for "live control" of something like a Mars Rover. That's not the "faster" they mean.
Also, in terms of the "don't need USB cables any more, just put them close to the computer" . . . so, next time I enter the datacenter, I won't have to actually sneak in a USB thumb drive to tap the servers and steal data . . . I can just "walk nearby" and tap in? Sounds like a path ripe for exploitation. I know, its not that simple, and theoretically we can "tap into" keystroke/mouse streams that are RF now . . . but a USB "tap" seems more capable of nefarious activity than just a keyboard sniffer.
And I'd agree with the one point . . . (just like regular WiFi) other factors come into play and the high rate will drop off fast with distance . . . still. Always good to push the envelope . . . congratz all around to the dev's.
No, I don't remember your name. But the memory mapped screen on a TRS80 from 1977 is from 15360 to 16383 if that helps.
Ahhh...the goal of continuous, direct-to-brain, high quality porn streams continue to be driven apace.
Excellent.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And all the popcorn in the break room popped.
While it may be argued that circular polarization is another MIMO scheme, it CAN achieve better speeds, because it DOESN'T REQUIRE EXTRA CHANNELS. MIMO, generally, does. There's nothing 'degenerate' about the relationship of the two schemes.
The real limitation here, is that this is a beam technology, it isn't for broadcast (i.e. you have to aim the sender and receiver antennae). The article mentions a 'phase plate', which implies the beam is directed perpendicular to the plane of that plate...
The real benefit, is that you get a factor of two without using any extra bandwidth from the available RF allocation.
While it may be argued that circular polarization is another MIMO scheme
No one is arguing circular polarization is another MIMO scheme, because it isn't, and neither is the OAM stuff talked about here circular polarization. It is a spatial structure applied to phase structure of the beam, and can be done without circular polarization involved at all. Using spatial structure to distinguish channels is essentially what MIMO comes down to. In fact, you can create OAM modes using multiple antennas with phase carefully controlled instead of a phase plate, however the phase plate is cheaper and works at much higher frequencies.
because it DOESN'T REQUIRE EXTRA CHANNELS
This scheme uses multiple communication channels in the form of multiple OAM modes. They can all share the same frequency band, with the spatial structure being used to distinguish things, just as can be done with MIMO.
I wish people were working on wired networking speed increases instead of wireless. 10G is expensive 40G is a joke, and 100G... isn't even here. If we can pump 30GBps wirelessly, doesn't that suggest that we should be able to get 10x that speed across copper?
note: I'm obviously not an RF engineer.
Get a pair of sneakers, or better yet, just toss it across the room.