Scientists are getting close to sending wireless data at a rate of one Terabit per second, almost ten thousand times faster than current speeds available to consumers.
A team from the University College London (UCL) have set a new world record in wireless transmission, successfully sending data over the air at a speed of 938 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) over a record frequency range of 5-150 Gigahertz (GHz).
Study author Dr Zhixin Liu said the speed was up to 9380 times faster than the best average 5G download speed in many parts of the world, which is currently 100 Megabits per second (Mb/s).
Dr Liu said the total bandwidth of 145GHz was more than five times higher than the previous wireless transmission world record.
He said typically, wireless networks transmitted information using radio waves over a narrow range of frequencies, with current wireless transmission methods, such as wi-fi and 5G mobile, predominantly operating at low frequencies below 6GHz.
“But congestion in this frequency range has limited the speed of wireless communications.”
Dr Liu said they overcame the bottleneck by transmitting information through a much wider range of radio frequencies by combining both radio and optical technologies for the first time.
He said this more efficient use of the wireless spectrum was expected to help meet growing demand for wireless data capacity and speed over the next three to five years.
“Current wireless communication systems are struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for high-speed data access, with capacity in the last few metres between the user and the fibre optic network holding us back.
“Our solution is to use more of the available frequencies to increase bandwidth, while maintaining high signal quality and providing flexibility in accessing different frequency resources. This results in super-fast and reliable wireless networks, overcoming the speed bottleneck between user terminals and the Internet.”
Read the full study: 938 Gb/s, 5–150 GHz Ultra-Wideband Transmission Over the Air Using Combined Electronic and Photonic-Assisted Signal Generation
