German researchers create 100 Gbps wireless network

Researchers from Germany have created the world's fastest wireless network capable of hitting 100 Gbps. A transfer rate of 100 Gbps is capable of moving 12.5 GB of data each second. That is 10 times faster than the speedy Google Fiber Internet service available in some parts of the country.

The researchers who created the incredibly fast wireless network are from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology called KIT and used bandwidth at around 240 GHz. The wireless network used a pair of laser beams to create the signal that carries data. The laser beams were mixed using a photon mixex made by NTT Electronics.

The hardware creates an electrical signal at 237.5 GHz. The researchers then used a standard antenna to beam the signal to a receiver where a chip made using III-V transistors is able to make sense out of the exceptionally high frequency signal. The special chip used by the researchers is capable of switching at 300 GHz and is pictured below.

This breakthrough is exciting for more than simply opening the possibility of faster download speeds for Internet and wireless network users in the business and consumer realm. The technology can also be perfect for adding to the end of a fiber-optic network. This wireless technology could potentially be used to one day to cover the last mile after a fiber network terminates at a telephone exchange or mobile base station. One caveat to the technology at this point is that it works only at a distance of about 20 m in the lab. Another interesting tidbit about the technology is that the 100 Gbps speed is achieved using a single data stream with multiple data streams having the potential to boost transmission speeds into the terabit per second range.

SOURCE: Extremetech