Physics World October 22, 2019 Researchers at the University of Oxford have shown that LiFi can work in lab demonstrations at speeds of 224 Gbps, illustrating the huge progress since Professor Haas from the University of Edinburgh, introduced LiFi in his 2011 TED talk. In that presentation, Haas demonstrated the benefits of LiFi with an LED light bulb housed in a desk lamp sitting on a small receiver unit. The four fundamental challenges that LiFi addresses are – first it’s efficient, second, LED lights are widely available, third, LiFi offers high capacity (the visible spectrum is 10,000 times wider than […]
Category Archives: Communications technology
A mathematical model reveals long-distance cell communication mechanism
Science Daily October 15, 2019 Cells often communicate using signaling molecules, which can travel only a short distance. Nevertheless, the cells can also communicate over large distances to spur collective action. An international team of researchers (USA – UT Houston, South Korea) used an engineered transcriptional circuit of combined positive and negative feedback loops in E. coli, which can periodically release two types of signaling molecules: activator and repressor. As the signaling molecules travel over a short distance, cells can only talk to their nearest neighbors. However, cell communities synchronize oscillatory gene expression in spatially extended systems if the transcriptional […]
Development of highly sensitive diode, converts microwaves to electricity
Science Daily September 26, 2019 Researchers in Japan have developed a highly sensitive rectifying element in the form of a nanowire backward diode, which can covert low-power microwaves into electricity. Equipment they used consists of a radio wave power generating element. The technology can efficiently convert 100nW-class low-power radio waves into electricity, enabling the conversion of microwaves emitted into the environment from mobile phone base stations in an area that is over 10 times greater than was previously possible. The researchers expect that the nanowire backward diode will be applied in using plentiful ambient radio wave energy in 5G communications, […]
Researchers show atoms can receive common communications signals
Nanowerk September 5, 2019 Researchers at NIST team used cesium atoms to receive digital bits in the most common communications format, which is used in cell phones, Wi-Fi and satellite TV, to demonstrate one can use atoms to receive modulated signals. The method works across a huge range of frequencies. They used a recently developed atom-based mixer to convert input signals into new frequencies. One RF signal acts as a reference and a second RF signal serves as the modulated signal carrier. Differences in frequency and the offset between the two signals were detected and measured by probing the atoms. […]
Technologies for the Sixth Generation Cellular Network
EurekAlert July 25, 2019 Seamless integration of THz links into existing fibre-optic infrastructures is of great importance to complement the inherent portability and flexibility advantages of wireless networks. Researchers in Germany have demonstrated a THz link that is seamlessly integrated into a fibre-optic network using direct THz-to-optical (T/O) conversion at the wireless receiver. They explored an ultra-broadband silicon-plasmonic modulator having a 3-dB bandwidth in excess of 0.36 THz for T/O conversion of a 50 Gbit s−1 data stream that is transmitted on a 0.2885 THz carrier over a 16-m-long wireless link. Optical-to-THz (O/T) conversion at the wireless transmitter relies on photomixing in a uni-travelling-carrier […]
New nanoantennas to improve ultra-fast wireless connections
Phys.org July 22, 2019 Typically used plasmonic wires introduce prohibitive losses, perform poorly for long-reach interconnects because of low-directive radiation and low efficiency. Researchers in Spain have designed a class of slot-waveguide-based silicon nanoantennas that address these limitations. To test the performance of these antennae, an on-chip plasmonic-dielectric interconnect was experimentally demonstrated over distances as high as 100 μm. The wireless scheme clearly outperformed previous plasmonic approaches in terms of link efficiency and effective gain. This work paves the way for the development of ultrafast on-chip wireless reconfigurable and flexible interconnects and opens new avenues in optical manipulation and sensing […]
World’s First “Quantum Drone” for Impenetrable Air-to-Ground Data Links Takes Off
IEEE Spectrum June 18, 2019 Researchers in China have developed an eight-rotor octocopter drone whose 35-kilogram weight at takeoff, includes its onboard quantum communication system. The quantum drone can operate while hovering in midair for 40 minutes at a time. It can maintain two air-to-ground links, each roughly 100 meters long, and can receive and transmit entangled photons during the daytime, on a clear night, and even on a rainy night. According to some scientists a communications network featuring quantum drones could be stymied by a number of challenges such as photons scattering, absorbed, or otherwise lost on their way […]
Record-breaking chaotic data transmission
Phys.org May 29, 2019 Chaotic optical secure communications (COSC) are a kind of fast-speed hardware encryption technique at the physical layer. Researchers in China have developed a scheme of long-haul COSC, where the bit rate reaches 1.25 Gbits/s and the transmission distance up to 143 km. The low-cost device is built with off-the-shelf optical components and does not require dispersion compensating fibre (DCF) or forward-error correction. The results show that high-quality chaotic synchronisation can be maintained both in time- and frequency-domain, even after 143 km transmission; the bandwidth of the transmitter is enlarged by the external optical injection, which leads […]
Breakthrough research to revolutionise internet communication
Phys.org April 18, 2019 To reduce the power consumed by the internet an international team of researchers (Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Russia) has created a device called a microresonator optical frequency comb made of a tiny disc of crystal. The device transforms a single colour of laser light into a rainbow of 160 different frequencies – each beam totally in sync with each other and perfectly stable. One such device could replace hundreds of power-consuming lasers currently used to encode and send data around the world. They expect the devices to be incorporated in sub-oceanic landing stations where all the […]
High-capacity transmission over multi-core fiber link with 19-core optical amplifier
Eurekalert April 8, 2019 The successful development of Space-Division-Multiplexing (SDM) amplifiers is crucial for commercial realization of SDM technologies. Researchers in Japan developed a 19-core Erbium-doped-fiber amplifier utilizing cladding-pumping technology in order to share electrical power between the large number of spatial channels. The amplifier was integrated into a transmission test bed of for a record transmission demonstration. Fully decoded optical data transmission of 715 Tb/s was achieved over 2,009 km using coded polarization division multiplexed (PDM) -16 quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM) of 345 carriers over the C and L band in a re-circulating transmission loop. The research enables development of […]