Wi-Fi connections 100 times faster thanks to terahertz frequencies

A scientific discovery of Brown University opens the door to further evolution in wireless network technologies by exploiting waves with frequencies in the order of terahertz.

A group of researchers from Brown University reported a big discovery in wireless communication technologies that could fuel the research networks that can operate at speeds unthinkable today. Exploiting electromagnetic waves with a frequency of terahertz order, and not of GHz as it is today, you can get a throughput of about 100 times higher than the best technologies currently popular on the market.

And researchers from Brown are the first to be able to make it happen: ” It’s the first-time anyone can prove a viable way to create multiplexing in the terahertz range, ” said Daniel Mittleman, a researcher at the university. Multiplexing is an essential characteristic for the realization of a wireless data flow at high speeds and is substantially the ability to send more data streams separated through the electromagnetic wave emanated from a single device.

But to make such an operation the size of the microwave sub-millimeter is not easy, and this is the challenge posed by Brown University. The team has made a prototype consists of two metal plates positioned parallel to one another so as to direct the flow of electromagnetic waves. A small slit in one of the two plates allows some radiation to scatter in different directions, with a receiver that can locate them relying on ‘inclination of the waves.

” By inserting in the antenna 10 different frequencies, each capable of carrying a single data stream, they will come out with ten different angles, ” says Mittleman. This will make it possible, for example, moving away or approaching the two plates, change the spectrum of bandwidth to handle it in the most appropriate manner and divide it among the different receivers as best it sees fit.

The prototype antenna Brown is still in an embryonic phase, we could say even conceptual. It will pass the time before we see a practical application of the intuition of the company, the new scientific discovery tells us that a wireless connection using terahertz frequencies is feasible and can be used for data exchange despite all physical limitations and obstacles to deal.