Wireless record breaker

Researchers at the University of Essex  have succeeded in transmitting data at 10.4 Gigabits/sec over a 60 metre line-of-sight span - this distance being typical of the urban distribution point to home environment in the UK. Greater distances should be possible and are the subject of further investigation.

While the techniques used by the Essex group fit exactly to the MultiBand Alliance template in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.15 ultra-wideband radio standardisation process, they are important because they show that transmitting data at 10 Gigabit/sec over a radio link is feasible.

Head of the Essex project, Professor Stuart Walker, commented: 'This achievement represents the culmination of many months of painstaking work. Multigigabit transmission systems of any sort require really detailed design and wireless is no exception. The original aim was just to investigate the performance of cheap flat patch antennas. We were pleasantly surprised by the initial results and kept on improving the experimental set-up.'