Paper: https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10584545
40GHz bandwidth LOL
I genuinely want to understand why is that funny? Is it unachievable for consumer electronics or…?
Well it’s a couple of things.
First off, a wireless transmission speed of 120Gbps sounds really impressive but remember from the Shannon-Hartley theorem that the maximum channel capacity is just a function of bandwidth and SNR. This means that you can get an arbitrarily high transmission speed by increasing bandwidth to an obscene amount and/or by increasing SNR (by transmitting at an obscenely high transmission power).
In the paper they say that the transmit power was 15 dBm which is a normal transmit power for WiFi, so it’s the 40GHz bandwidth that’s doing the heavy lifting in allowing that data rate.
The second thing is that WiFi 6 (for example) uses 1.2 GHz of bandwidth in the 6GHz range, divided into seven non-overlapping 160MHz channels. WiFi 5 uses about nine 80MHz channels in the 5GHz range, and so on. So if you want to use the technology demonstrated in the paper for WiFi (as the headline of the article is suggesting) then you’d need a bunch of 40GHz channels in the higher ~200-300 GHz range which would be in the very high microwave range, bordering on far infra-red!
If you want to imagine how useful that would be, just think about how useful your infra-red TV remote is. You would only be able to do line-of-sight point-to-point links at that frequency.
IR point-to-point links already exist, and the silicon they invented for this paper is impressive, but the hype around it being a possible future WiFi standard doesn’t really hold up to basic inspection.
The triangle of compromise
SpeedPower
Bandwidth
RangeYou cant have all 3. Just like manufacturing
Speed and bandwidth are the same thing. Power is the other side of that triangle.
But that ignores encoding, and other tricks like signal shaping, frequency multiplexing, and all kinds of fun stuff. Wireless data transmission is complicated. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation
Sorry ment power, bandwidth, range
To be fair most wifi is used within homes or businesses these days so I would simply sacrifice range — as long as the minimum range is reasonable
yeah but this wifi you can only use in one room …
I would use this for streaming games from a wired PC to a device that’s wireless. Not having to run a wire is magical.
i imagine a use-case for vr headsets
I mean, no kidding. Þere are any number is use cases for getting rid of wires. Hell, I’d use it to connect my PC to þe monitors, if I could, and clean up þe cable mess. But streaming from þe home media server to a TV? No brainer. Also, even if þe single-room comment is accurate, daisy chain. Þe only real show stopper would be if it were line-of-sight.
It pretty much would be line of sight only.
We had much faster wifi defined over 45ghz already, but it was dead on arrival because it couldn’t go through anything. This would be a channel width of 40ghz, so it would have to be at least up to 100ghz to accommodate regulations…
Bummer. Still, I’d do a lot to reduce cabling.
5G mm wave can be blocked by paper ffs, range doesnt matter if a leaf can block the line of sight. Idk why we can use the low bandwidth long range 900-1200mhz and just use an array of atenna send out multiple channels to increase bandwidth. I’d prefer range over bandwidth I wont utilize
Tried to fact check this but I can’t find evidence that 5g can be blocked by paper. Looks like it’s in 24-28ghz and while it can be blocked with materials the density matters. So maybe like a few books thick of paper but not one sheet?
Note that this demo takes things over 100ghz. So the challenges associated with mmwave (and wigig) are even more.
Good point thx
WiFi is getting so good but i kinda dont want it to. I like wiring up the computers in my house but now its like WiFi is good enough it doesnt provide any advantages.
Until I can get internet options faster than 50Mbps in my area I don’t understand why we’re trying to get higher and higher upper limits on speed
And what are we downloading? Is the cloud dead? Why do i need 15gbps on my phone? Is it made for consoles and their relentless 120gb patches?
In the US we’ll do anything but build fiber with the billions we tossed at the telecom industry.
Putting fiber in the ground is expensive. I work for an ISP, and we estimate fiber overbuild costs at $15/ft. So a mile of underground fiber costs about $79,200.
Yup. That’s why we gave them all that money years ago to do it. It was cheaper then too.
The distribution of all human knowledge, untampered.
For home use, all I can think of is wireless video. 15 GB/s is faster than the fastest DisplayPort or HDMI versions. It could handle any resolution and refresh rate currently in use without any compression. That would be useful for VR headsets since they need low latency.
Yeah - that covers about 1/100000 users
I’m pretty sure anyone using an HDMI cable could appreciate having no cables except power.
VR headset streaming video from PC without cables.
More bandwidth available for users means more people can do more things on the internet and at a higher quality.
If cell phone speeds are high enough, then we should be able to transition from wired internet which is not available to a lot of people to only using cell networks.
It’s also not going to be 15gbps per device.
1.5gb/s is way more than enough for the average person. Hell, 200Mb/s is more than enough. That would only be 10 min.
