CSIRO Demonstrates Fastest Wireless Link Yet

rob101 writes "The CSIRO yesterday demonstrated the world's 'fastest' wireless radio link by transmitting sixteen full quality DVD streams over a 250m link and only using a quarter of the available bandwidth. 'The CSIRO ICT Centre today announced that it has achieved over six gigabits per second over a point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4bits/s/Hz) ever achieved for such a system.'" CSIRO hopes to double the speed of this connection in the future, pushing twelve gigabits a second.

Ugh!

[lordvalrole]

I swear, none of this technology ever sees the light of day to the public. It is just astounding on how much bullshit that goes around in this country because of big business models. Something amazing like this should be rolled out everywhere. Even if this stuff costs a crap load atleast it is better spent on the public than a shitty ass war. It is nice to know US tax dollars go out the window where it could be actually funding programs like this and help roll out this tech. to communities. We have such a big business mindset in America that we end up going into tunnel vision.

I think I am frustrated paying $40 for a crappy Verizon connection that peaks about 120k/s and when I am actually downloading something and trying to browse the web, it ends up being slower than 56k.

This is a great achievement but it wont see the light of day in a very very long time if ever. (maybe our government will use it but not us)

Re:Side benefit

[imaginaryelf]

I know you're just joking, but to clear up a common misconception, your microwave oven operates at 2.5GHz, which is why it interferes with current wifi stuff.

This technology operates at 85GHz, which is still in the microwave/radar band of the EM spectrum, so it's likely to interfere with radars.

Re:Terminology

[BigZaphod]

Well, according to one page I found, the Library of Congress is (was?) around 10 Terabytes. Google says that equals 83,886,080 Megabits. Wikipedia says that DVD video can run at 9.8 Megabits/second using MPEG-2. So, my calculation is: (9.8 * 16) / 83886080 = 0.00000186920166 LOC/s. (Here's hoping I didn't make some stupid 2:30am math mistake here... :))

Re:Can't wait...

[jmv]

Only to realise that the extremely high frequency is ionizing my head...

Actually, I wouldn't worry about ionizing radiation [wikipedia.org] as those only start at frequencies above visible light.

Re:(2.4bits/s/Hz)?

[GrizlyAdams]

Multiply the frequency of the channel being transmitted on by 2.4 and you get the bit rate. Supposing you were transmitting on 2.434 GHz you could get about 5.8 Gbit/s one way. at 85GHz thats 204 Gbit/s. Mind you this is not your actual sustainable data rate. You would likely be limited to 1/4th to 1/10th this by noise, packet overhead, latency issues, etc. A this kind of frequency anything getting in the line of site can kill your signal, of course, your signal can likely kill anything staying too long in the beam as well. I don't really even understand how you can encode 2.4 bits per Hz, cause thats a bit much data to be packing into a single oscillation.
Disclaimer: I am not a HAM, or anything approaching an EE, just someone who likes math / science.

Re:Rare, example of tech patents working

[AlanS2002]

It's also a extremely good counter example to the small government argument that the private sector can always do anything better/more efficiently.

Re:Rare, example of tech patents working

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that the CSIRO is in the red on this one. So far their legal fees trying to defend the 802.11 patent substantially exceed their receipts. There is quite a bit of controversy with claims that the legal battle is draining research funds. Thus even this rare example is broken.

Re:Ugh!

[TapeCutter]

Radio comms has been a productive area of reasearch at CSIRO for decades. Politicians who ignore them are the ones who waste MY tax dollars. There are many examples that defend the CSIRO's enviable reputation for genuine science without political "fear or favour", ie a "model public service" (as opposed to the non-existant "perfected public service" or the ever present "public propoganda service").

To give an example of just one "public service": The CSIRO were the first to demonstrate to the world that radiation from atmoshperic testing of nukes was ending up as plutonium and other RA trace elements in childrens bones (MY bones considering the era). They found out by starting with an agricultural study into sheep near an Australian test site run by the Brit's and found the bombs were adding to a rapidly growing planet wide "haze" of radioactive dust.

Obviously they were not popular with the politicians of the day when their extrodinary claim was promptly backed with extrodinary evidence.

Re:Only a quarter of the available bandwidth...

[jmv]

Cost of the LCD screens. I'm not joking.