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.