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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 Vučić 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. µ
230Mbps but over what distance?
The transmission method is still going to be overlaying data onto the AC signal, the same as 101 LAN over mains units already do, and although mine were rated at 86Mbs, which they could do when plugged into the sockets next to each other, move them a bit further round the house and they're down to 40Mbs. I doubt I could even get them to sync from 3 houses down the road on the same transformer phase, let alone long distance.
The only "new" idea here is replacing the last couple of meters of bidirectional cat5 delivery with a unidirectional flickering LED.
Sounds promising, but beware epileptics. Also, we still do not know the continued affect of radio waves on us, and now we are going to expose our self to organized light emissions.
This is unfounded, but what if this becomes disruptive to our biology? Just because our eyes cannot perceive the flashing lights, what of our other senses? And How Might they react.
Little fun for thought =)
...the epileptic attacks are just side effects of streaming to my media centre
So the new technology is Morse code?
Ah, the world has come full circle.
- IBM shows off sub-10nm carbon nanotube transistors
- Microsoft shows off touchy feely surfaces of the future
- Boffins invent an operating system for cities
- Nike is readying Back to the Future shoes
- IBM and 3M are developing semiconductor adhesives
- Amazon chief fails to deliver rocket to space
- Lightbulbs can be used to broadcast wireless internet
- IBM unveils chips that can mimic the brain
