UK team leads European effort to pioneer high speed wireless data coverage

The amount of data used by wireless devices such as tablets and smart phones already exceeds that of desktop computers, and is set to increase further as emerging technologies such as 4k video streaming, cloud gaming and augmented reality take off.

Increasing the amount of wireless data available will mean covering urban areas with dense grids of micro, nano and pico cells, each serving a small number of users.

But transmitting the data to these cells before it can be shared amongst users will be no easy task. Existing base stations are fed data through fibres, according to Professor Claudio Paoloni at Lancaster University. “But if the number of cells were to increase substantially, the fibre would be very difficult and expensive to install,” he said.

One option is to use millimetre wave frequencies, in the 30-300GHz range, to transmit data wirelessly.

However, millimetre wave signals are susceptible to attenuation, or weakening, by rain and fog, said Paoloni, who is leading a €2.9million European Union Horizon 2020 project aiming to develop technologies to exploit this part of the spectrum.