Infrared WiFi is 17 times faster than usual, but one-sided

The experimental WiFiFO system (2015) works on the same principle as the new system, only in the visible range and much slower.

Doctoral student Joanne Oh (Joanne Oh) from the Institute of Photon Integration of the University of Technology Eindhoven defended her doctoral thesis , which is a unique technology of wireless data transmission in the near infrared range. This light will be visible only to cats and on the screens of digital cameras.

A 40Gb / s high-speed optical channel will be an addition to WiFi, and maybe to Ethernet. If you want to connect a stationary computer or a TV over a fast channel, we hang a light antenna above it, that is, a pair of passive diffraction gratings. They do not even require power. But must sit on the fiber.

A Dutch female engineer was inspired by the idea of WiFiFO (WiFi Free space Optic) - a real data transmission technology through LED light bulbs, which demonstrated successful operation at 100 Mbps. According to the inventors, this technology should complement existing WiFi systems in public places, where WiFi cannot cope with the load due to the large number of people. For example, in airports, cafeterias, sports arenas, etc. In addition, the optical channel will help in residential buildings, where just too many WiFi devices are installed that can work simultaneously. Obviously, with a dozen of such devices in each apartment, tenants of multi-storey buildings will begin to experience problems due to signal interference. Access speed decreases. Optical channel will solve this problem.
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The new system of the Eindhoven University of Technology uses not visible light, but the near infrared range with a wavelength of 1500 nm (200 THz). The author has developed a technology in support of a doctoral thesis. Unfortunately, doctoral dissertations are not published on the Internet as scientific articles, so the technical details of the invention are not yet known. Probably, the author still has to rework the dissertation in the format of the article and send it for consideration in scientific journals. The process can take a long time.

At the experimental facility, under laboratory conditions, it was possible to achieve a speed of 42.8 Gbit / s per infrared beam at a distance of 2.5 meters. This is about 71 times higher than the theoretical maximum of 600 Mbps in the modern 802.11n WiFi standard. But after all, WiFi is divided among all users connected to one hotspot, so it is quite correct to speak about the 100-fold superiority of the new technology in speed.

If we compare it with the more modern 802.11ac standard, it has a speed of 2.5 Gbit / s, but it operates at a frequency of 5 GHz with a limited radius and is also shared among all users. In this case, the advantage will not be so impressive: only 17 times.

The system is simple and cheap to install. The main transmission channel is the fiber optic channel. Several “light antennas” are connected to it, which can be installed on the ceiling or walls of the room - and precisely directed to the desired point where the transmission will take place. Tellingly, antennas do not even need power, because they are a pair of passive diffraction gratings that reflect light at different angles depending on the wavelength.


WiFiFO prototype (2015) on networking can correspond to future data transmission systems in the infrared range

Researchers believe that antennas can be placed in a room in such a way that the light cones will cover a solid area. If a person is out of range of one antenna, another antenna intercepts it, and data transfer continues uninterrupted.

Infrared WiFi can serve multiple users at the same time, simply assigning a different wavelength to each device in the room.

This project was created in the framework of a more extensive project BROWSE, which is headed by a professor of technology for broadband communications Ton Kunen. BROWSE is funded by the European Research Council and conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Photon Integration at Eindhoven University of Technology.

It is assumed that it will take about five years or more to enter the market. Probably the first devices with IR modems and photo detectors could be gadgets that need to receive data at high speed - laptops, tablets, monitors / TVs, etc.