Li-Fi-like System Pushes 100Gbps Within a Small Room
An anonymous reader writes: Oxford University is [building] a system that takes light from the fiber, amplifies it, and beams it across a room to deliver data at more than 100 gigabits per second. ... The trick, of course, is getting the light beam exactly where it needs to go. An optical fiber makes for a target that's only 8 or 9 micrometers in diameter, after all. The team, which also included researchers from University College, London, accomplished this using so-called holographic beam steering at both the transmitter and receiver ends. These use an array of liquid crystals to create a programmable diffraction grating that reflects the light in the desired direction. ... With a 60-degree field of view, the team was able to transmit six different wavelengths, each at 37.4 Gb/s, for an aggregate bandwidth of 224 Gb/s (abstract). With a 36-degree field of view, they managed only three channels, for 112 Gb/s.
Aaaah! My eye!
Wi-fi key advantage is the fact that it goes threw walls and a single router can give strong coverage in you home, as well most small offices.
This is a point of sight technology. So for home or office it will need to be Non obstructive.
You are still better off with wired if you need such speed, the wire will just be more convenant and dependable
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I really need 224 gbps internet so I can burn my 350gb cap in 13 seconds.
Agreed, Li means Lithium
This has been done to death. If you concentrate the otherwise omnidirectional signal into a beam, it can get improve snr between sender and receiver and so get higher data rates.
The problem is not beamforming. We've been able to dynamically beamform for decades. The problem in mobile packet networks like WiFi is knowing in what direction to point the bloody beam. This is not a solved problem. These researchers have not solved this problem. They've invented a better beam former, when the missing piece is the prescient algorithm that can predict where someone has moved since the last packet.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
"The trick, of course, is getting the light beam exactly where it needs to go"
I know, lets call this trick "a laser".
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
As a citizen of the United States I know that this technology can not exist. My fellow Americans have long concluded that only the US can have any advanced technology or scientific knowledge. England in particular along with those non bathing French weirdos have never had any non US technology that was worth a hoot. This conclusion is part of respect for American exceptional doctrines which explain that Shakespeare and Chris Columbus were both born in New Jersey and that Christ was born after the Civil War ended.
Seconded.
... means nothing ... meant nothing
Light-Fidelity
Wireless-Fidelity
Hi-Fidelity as in a sound system actually meant something once.
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
Lasers need to be quite accurately directed. You may well need a laser to generate the signal, but you probably want to focus it at a mirror that will spread the signal around the room. The trick is to either avoid or allow for multi-path "ghosts". This will even allow the receiver to be moving around within the room (as long as it is moving "slowly" enough .. and my rough guess is that anything slower than 100 Kps would count as slow enough).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
'Fidelity' in the wireless sense was because the methods and algorithms developed by the CSIRO had a considerable impact on the recovery of the transmitted signal.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
It seems to me that fidelity is a requirement for anything digital to operate, and it isn't really used anywhere else in computer parlance. I always assumed it was borrowed by 'marketing speclalists' from hi-fi for stereo systems, since that was always taken to be the 'high-end' version of a stereo, and it makes more sense to me as a claim of high-fidelity in an analog system, where the end result can approximate the original, and still get away with it.
Or put more simply lo-fi computer system = bsod.
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!