Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Terabit Infrared Could Trounce Wi-Fi

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 00:03:24 -0400

Terabit Infrared Could Trounce Wi-Fi
By Clive Akass

September 15, 2003

Infrared links, which have been overshadowed of late by fast Wi-Fi, could
make a comeback, thanks to a new low-cost British-built optical "aerial,"
called a "concentrator," that offers up to 50 times the performance of a
standard lens and promises much higher data speeds.
"We're already seeing gigabits [per second] on point-to-point applications,"
said Alex Clarke, global marketing director of Optical Antenna Solutions
(OAS), a spinoff of Warwick University. "My vision is of offices bathed
with IR carrying terabits of information."

OAS and Germany-based Silicon Sensor have packed the concentrator
with a detector into a single module with a much wider angle of view than a
standard sensor. The increased performance means the sensor can be smaller,
reducing the capacitance and enabling the use of much higher frequencies.

Infrared has an odd history in computing: long a standard feature of
notebooks, it costs only a couple of pounds to implement, yet few desktop
PCs support it, so notebook IR ports have little to talk to. This was partly
due to early hiccups, which gave them a reputation for unreliability.

Yet, the fact that infrared does not penetrate walls, often seen as a snag,
makes it more secure than radio -- an early application of the OAS lens is
likely to be in digital payment systems. And IR can be directional, which
means you simply point to what you want to talk to, avoiding complex
addressing issues.

Office systems that can keep roaming mobiles hooked into the network use
"diffuse IR," which bounces signals off walls and ceilings. Early systems
tended to have blind spots, but Clarke says they are much improved.

He points out that infrared has none of the interference or regulatory
problems of radio. "And there are still doubts about whether the use of
radio is healthy. There is some research showing that infrared can be good
for you."

www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/22295.html
www.silicon-sensor.com/ag/eng/index.htm
www.warwick.ac.uk
www.opticalantennasolutions.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/