A simple design innovation scheme can double the cellular and Wi-Fi bandwidth.

A group of engineers from the University of Texas at Austin declare that they have solved the problem of half duplex reception and transmission of radio signals, thanks to the creative use of a circulator. Circulator - a scheme in which the radio signal is transmitted through a chain of ports in such a way that the signal supplied to the first port goes through the second, to the second through the third, and so on. The inventors have proposed a scheme without moving parts and inexpensive and easy to manufacture. In the future, it can be embedded not only in Wi-Fi routers, but also in smartphones. This writes the journal Nature

Cellular and Wi-Fi networks have one fundamental problem - they work on the principle of half-duplex communication. At one point, the device can either transmit data or receive it - but not simultaneously. If you try to do it at the same time, the interference between the signals makes it impossible to work with them. Circulators have long been used to implement the full duplex in expensive equipment communication systems. Classic circulators use permanent magnets and ferrite alloys, and therefore have great weight and dimensions.


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Texas engineers created a circulator without any magnets, a prototype of which is only 2 cm in size. Industrial production and further development can lead to a reduction in device size by orders of magnitude. The new circulator works in a manner similar to the classical one, but its magnetic displacement effect of the electromagnetic wave is replaced by the effect of a traveling wave rotating inside this ring device. Due to the absence of magnets, magnetic cores and the availability of electronic control, the operating frequency of the new circulator can be rebuilt in a very wide range right during its operation, which is impossible to do with classical magnetic circulators. It turns out that the new circulator can simply double the network bandwidth at no extra cost.