2.5 Terabits Per Second Wireless Connection Demonstrated

Our wireless future will be very, very fast, it seems. Researchers have managed to establish a wireless data relay that is, by a large margin, faster than anything else yet demonstrated. And once again the tech relates to spinning the signal.

A team of Israeli and American researchers have managed to demonstrate a beam that can transfer 2.5 terabits of data every single second. That is 128 gigabytes of data sent every second over a wireless medium.

How did they achieve this? By spinning the signal into a vortex. If you remember, we've reported on spinning radio waves before. But that was the technical proof that this type of technique was possible; this is the first time that someone tried to put it to good use. Think of it as technological development.

The most promising thing is the language: the Bo Thide, who helped prove that this type of thing was possible, specifically said that this technique could be used to spin together an "infinite number" of conventional transmissions into a single beam. Which means that we could increase throughput by an order of magnitude.

We're talking less of a jump from 3G to 4G and more of one from GPRS (one of the earliest technologies used in wireless data networks) to a dedicated fiber-optic line. This technique could make bandwidth essentially limited and enable the transfer of terabytes of data in minutes to your phone.

Just as a comparison, this data link has a spectral efficiency of 95.7 bits per hertz. LTE,, meanwhile, the technology that powers our best 4G, has a spectral efficiency of just 16.32. 802.11n is just 2.4 bits/hertz.

So if you aren't excited for our wireless future yet, well, you will be soon.

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