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Optical Tech Can Boost Wi-Fi Systems' Capacity With LEDs
chasm22 writes: Researchers at Oregon State University have invented a new technology that can increase the bandwidth of WiFi systems by 10 times, using LED lights to transmit information. The system can potentially send data at up to 100 megabits per second. Although some current WiFi systems have similar bandwidth, it has to be divided by the number of devices, so each user might be receiving just 5 to 10 megabits per second, whereas the hybrid system could deliver 50-100 megabits to each user.
Drawbacks are huge.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Wouldn't this technology be limited to line of sight, in addition to being annoying anywhere outside of a rave?
If you really need solid bandwidth.... RUN AN ETHERNET CABLE. Please. I keep running into people who insist on running everything over wireless..... no. just no.
Can they do this without it being visible light?
I'm pretty sure you could really mess up some epileptics this way.
Not to mention I can see this giving some people migraines ... I know many many people who can see the flickering of fluorescent lights.
Cool, awesome, yay progress. But I don't want to be in a place where I am aware of the flashing lights.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
IRDA is back. Hey I have an idea, why not just have an access point that, for each user, drops a little cord out of the ceiling (where all access points are, right) and you plug it in for GIGABIT SPEEEDZZZS!!!1.
No but seriously why are we doing this when channels in the 5 Ghz spectrum are easy to come by.
As more and more people demand wireless access, yet bandwidth is limited, I figures we were going to need to go to something like this eventually. Fiber as absolutely par as possible, then IR to the device. IT woun't be as "handy" as a whole house rf setup, but there are only so many RF channels available, and services like GPS are kind of reluctant to give up a vital resource so we can surf porn.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
...they need to use *App* lights, not LED lights, to make it work better!
Optical networking startups are littered through history. Ultimately the tech works, but has caveats like you can't move your machine around without losing connectivity, and you also lose connectivity whenever someone walks in front of the beam. Also, they tend to be expensive, and since the machine ends up having to be basically immobile anyway it usually makes sense to just run cables instead.
Even for Point to Point links where you can't easily run cables (to a building across the street for example), you end up with a reasonably fast link that still cuts out when there is heavy rain or a bird lands in front of it or something. 100Mbps is really nothing to write home about either. In 2015 you should be pushing more like 1Gbps over an optical link to make it even somewhat attractive compared to plain old WiFi.
I read the internet for the articles.
All schemes that involves knowing which direction to point the EM waves ahead of time is structurally incapable of being a WiFi physical layer.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You know what else would increase the bandwidth of Wi-Fi? We could run run wires from the router to each individual device.
The beauty of Wi-Fi is that it just works as long as you're in range of the signal without having to mess with wires or aiming.
At light frequencies we get higher bandwidth than at typical RF frequencies !
Quick ! Let's invent a transparent fiber and build cables fwith them inside !
First off, this has nothing to do with Wifi in your home or office where there is little line of sight and lots of RF-soaking walls to help isolate your access points.
When you're dealing with a large area with dense users (airport, lecture hall, arena, etc), wireless becomes really hard. The shared medium and limited number of non-overlapping channels becomes a real issue.
You can get directional antennas to try to isolate the overlapping channels, but there is reflection to deal with. It is a constant battle of too little power to work, and too much power and you are interfering with another access point.
Are you really going to run Cat6 all over the lecture hall or airport? To everyone's handheld device? No.
LED lights are far more directional, so even though you still have a shared medium, you're not dealing with the same issues at gigahertz RF.
This is a niche, but a very important one.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
When you're dealing with a large area with dense users (airport, lecture hall, arena, etc), wireless becomes really hard
That's because they insist on using the small (3-4 channels) and crowded 2.4GHz band.
it's LiFi. Don't believe it.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
If you are effectively tethered to a 1 sq meter zone, you might as well be litterally tethered to a 1 meter ethernet cable .
and since we're all dropping LED lights into our home already, one could imagine a future scenarios where the power socket of your bulbs can transmit data from your router to a local sub-room data broadcast (i.e. directly above your location in the home). Uploads could still be wifi based.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I am almost certain I saw this kind of thing in a Radio Shack catalog in the 80's, lol i mean it was basically an LED and a photodetector and they sold it as a 'wireless communicator' or something but it was for hobbyists just mucking around, and it was only good for (what I assume was) low-quality voice communications.
That's because they insist on using the small (3-4 channels) and crowded 2.4GHz band.
First off, there are still a LOT of devices without 5ghz support. I know many companies that are still ordering 2.4ghz-only laptops in 2015. Seriously. 2.4ghz is going to die as slow of a death as IPv4.
Second, 5ghz gives you 9 channels instead of 3, true. In a room that can have 500 people, though, that is still 55 people per channel. That is slow.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Ohhhh, multicast video over LED? Streaming the live CCTV stream at whatever event you're at to any handheld without impacting your Wifi spectrum!
Everyone that leaves the main area to get a beer or dispose of one can still stay connected to the event.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I've often thought connectorless optical data would be a nice docking technology for a water resistant smartphone.
I am almost certain I saw this kind of thing in a Radio Shack catalog in the 80's ...
It's as old as infrared LEDs and networking.
Datapoint did it with Arcnet in the late '70s: Both infrared office networking patches (though I don't know if those were productized or just experimental) and the "Arclight" building-to-building cross-town infrared link (which had a pair of lenses each about the diameter of a coffee can.).
Arcnet was still a going technology when the first portable ("luggable") computer - the Osborne-1 - came out in '81. (But I don't know if any of them were ever hooked to Arcnet, let alone the office-infrared flavor.) With the machines being desktop devices requiring power, running coax to the desk wasn't a big deal. So I don't think the office I.R. link got much deployment (even if it WAS productized.)
The Arcnet's token-passing logical ring was self-healing, which was a decent match for intermittent connections. When a rainstorm blocked the building-to-building link the net would automatically partition itself into two working nets and when it cleared they'd heal back into one. Similarly, walking between an infrared-linked machine and its hub would cut the machine off only until you walked away and leave the net running (with a quick hiccup) meanwhile.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How many times are people going to have claimed to have "invented" this technology? See for example US Patents 3,900,404, Optical Communication System, using fluorescent lamps. Comparable patent applications and academic papers for LEDs were published over a decade ago.
First off, there are still a LOT of devices without 5ghz support.
There are even less with optical network support.
Second, 5ghz gives you 9 channels instead of 3, true.
No, there are 23 channels.
Ohhhh, multicast video over LED?
That's called a TV.
And each of those 23 channels can use space division multiple access (aka beam forming, aka multi-user MIMO) so if you lay things out right you can get as few as 3-4 users per channel per conversation domain which ends up providing plenty of bandwidth.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Gone are the times when something really important came out of university laboratories. You can do this is your own workshop.
This is a niche, but a very important one.
It's a niche and it's a small one. I've seen free space light networks fail to get traction over and over. I see no reason to think tying it to WiFi will work any better.
Beat me all you want Cardassian. There are only 3 channels!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
No, there are 23 channels.
In the USA, excluding DFS, it's 9.
DFS channels are all secondary to other uses, so you can't plan on them.
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Optical systems have been around for a long time. TFA is pretty vague about how this one works. What is new that would qualify it for a patent?
Although some current WiFi systems have similar bandwidth, it has to be divided by the number of devices, so each user might be receiving just 5 to 10 megabits per second...
Current 80MHz 4x4 WiFi can reach speeds over 1Gbps... Even a 1x1 station can see about 350Mbps of throughput in a clean channel. This comparison is nonsense.
Next generation WiFi having MU-MIMO support also won't split the bandwidth as described (I think this is a fair comparison since this is also a technology is not yet widely adopted).
If they all have their own devices and are living in their own little stream-world, what are they all in the main area for? Isn't that what great honkin' TVs are for?
So many drawbacks. What a terrible idea. (and not even a new idea, as everyone here remembers)
- have to install heaps of "access points" in the ceiling, much more than wifi. (huge costs) (this guy is seeing $_$ as he is thinking of all the access points he would sell)
- need line of sight
- bandwidth of Wifi is improving rapidly anyway, so its a weak argument saying that this WIFO system has better bandwidth...
- this still has bandwidth problems when 10-20 users are sharing an LED...
its better to work on improving Wifi, as that has much more potential, and we have chosen the path already.