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An alternative to WiFi
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An alternative to WiFi

by Staff Writer  on Mar 16, 2010
Tags: wireless | wifi | science

While we're still waiting to hear about broadband being pumped directly in to our brains, we're bringing you the next best thing - broadband pumped through your light switches

According to Science Daily, German Scientists believe the light coming in to your home could by encoded to receive a wireless broadband signal. The theory is proposed by Jelena Vucic and colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications.

The team believes it can optimise the synergy of light and data. Currently we use a limited and crowded radio-frequency for WiFi so the team thinks it can plunder the resources of visible-frequency wireless. The scientists think they can exploit the higher bandwidths by generating a signal in a room by slightly flickering all the lights in unison.

The theory is that lights will have to be LEDs to flicker quickly enough and only use the blue part of the LED spectrum to filter out noise. With this technique, the team claims in tests that it achieved data bandwidth rates of 230Mbps, a record for visible wireless. The team also thinks it can get even better data rates if it can get its paws on some better equiment.

The findings will be presented at the catchily named Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference in the US on 21-25 March.

 

"It's got to go through the switch to get to the bulb dak..:)"
 
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Comments: 2
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
dak
Mar 17, 2010 1:17 AM
Instead of "broadband pumped through your light switches" that would be "broadband pumped through your light bulbs", wouldn't it?


Comment made about the PC Authority article:
An alternative to WiFi?
While we're still waiting to hear about broadband being pumped directly in to our brains, we're bringing you the next best thing - broadband pumped through your light switches

What do you think? Join the discussion.
Slatts
Mar 17, 2010 8:10 PM
It's got to go through the switch to get to the bulb dak..:)
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