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.

Comments

Oh great

[jeffmeden]

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.

Expensive and fragile

[jandrese]

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.

This is an important fix, and wired isn't an anwer

[Aqualung812]

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.