Terrahertz wireless data transfer achieved.

[stuff_it]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-japan-collab-transmits-terahertz.html

Researchers from Japan-based semiconductor manufacturer Rohm, together with a team from Osaka University, have come up with a chip that, in experiments, has achieved a wireless data transmission speed of 1.5 gigabits per second. This is a record breaker as the world's first terahertz wireless communication achieved with a small semiconductor device. The chip’s ability to transmit at such a quick speed is not the end of the story. Even higher transmission speeds of up to 30 Gbps may be possible in the future, according to reports.

 

[Teepee]

terahertz?! I always thought that was a weird bit of spectrum that couldn't be used effectively... something about terahertz freqs being hard to generate. Anyone know more?

 

[WouldBe]

How do they work out it's terrahertz when it's only gigabits per second.

 

[bi0boy]

How do they work out it's terrahertz when it's only gigabits per second.

The tera refers to the frequency of the waves used to transmit the data, and the giga refers to the quantity of data transmitted

 

[WouldBe]

That's what I suspected. So why do you need Terra hertz to transmit 1.5 gigabits per second?

I thought you could already get gigabit per second over wi-fi?

 

[TruXta]

Tera. Not terra. /pedant

 

[tombowler]

whats the propergation like at terahertz? will it be line of sight or will it go through rock ect? I can see loads of folks pannicking that it will damage thier health.

i think the hardest part is transmitting at that high a frequency,

funny it was Rohm im 99% sure i used to sell their resistors (bog std 1/4 stuff nice quality though) surprise they have gone from resistive to semiconductors but it was back in the 80's when i was selling thier stuff. ( or i could be confusing them with Royal Ohm)

 

[MikeMcc]

it's a much bigger band that could be used, the VHF and microwave bands are already pretty cluttered. From the look of the pictured device it looks like a fairly directional device (effectively a waveguide and horn).

It can't penetrate very far, so it will be line of sight only. All objects naturally emit terahertz radiation, that was one of the early features that was noted and used in scanners to detect concealed firearms, etc, without the near to emit more damaging x-rays. It's still cheaper to build whole-body x-ray scanners rather than build terahertz scanners, so they still haven't been greatly expanded.

 

[bi0boy]

it's a much bigger band that could be used, the VHF and microwave bands are already pretty cluttered. From the look of the pictured device it looks like a fairly directional device (effectively a waveguide and horn).

It can't penetrate very far, so it will be line of sight only..

So it's basically as shit as the USB IR receiver I still have somewhere that I once used to transfer files to my Nokia 6210. You'd breathe and the connection would drop.

 

[MikeMcc]

Just a faster version of shit! USB is only upto 480M transfer rate.

 

[bi0boy]

Just a faster version of shit! USB is only upto 480M transfer rate.

IrDA was 4 Mbit/s IIRC, but the main annoyance was the line of sight thing.