A new world record in wireless transmission, promising faster and more reliable wireless communications, has been set by researchers from UCL.
The team successfully sent data over the air at a speed of 938 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) over a record frequency range of 5-150 Gigahertz (GHz).
This speed is up to 9,380 times faster than the best average 5G download speed in the UK, which is currently 100 Megabits per second (Mb/s) or over1. The total bandwidth of 145GHz is more than five times higher than the previous wireless transmission world record.
Typically, wireless networks transmit information using radio waves over a narrow range of frequencies. Current wireless transmission methods, such as wi-fi and 5G mobile, predominantly operate at low frequencies below 6GHz.
But congestion in this frequency range has limited the speed of wireless communications.
Researchers from UCL (University College London) Electronic & Electrical Engineering overcame this bottleneck by transmitting information through a much wider range of radio frequencies by combining both radio and optical technologies for the first time. The results are described in a new study published in The Journal of Lightwave Technology.
This more efficient use of the wireless spectrum is expected to help meet growing demand for wireless data capacity and speed over the next three to five years.
Dr Zhixin Liu, senior author of the study from UCL Electronic & Electrical Engineering, said: “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.
“Our new approach combines two existing wireless technologies for the first time, high-speed electronics and millimetre wave photonics, to overcoming these barriers. This new system allows for the transmission of large amounts of data at unprecedented speeds, which will be crucial for the future of wireless communications.”
