We wrote a few weeks ago about a landmark court ruling in the case of Australian research organization CSIRO against Buffalo Technology, in which the court said that CSIRO had a valid claim for patent rights involving OFDM technology used in 802.11a- and 802.11g-based WLANs. The legal skirmishes are not yet over, but the Aussies now stand a very good chance of collecting millions and millions of dollars in royalties from a slew of WiFi vendors.
The CSIRO ICT Center has thousands of patents to its name. Here is the latest report from this active down-under research center: Its researchers demonstrated what must be regarded as the world's fastest wireless link--more than six gigabits per second over a point-to-point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4 bits/s/Hz). To appreciate this speed: The entire works of Shakespeare could be transmitted over this 6 Gbps link in under seven thousandths of a second; a full DVD movie would take just over six seconds. The team demonstrated a transmission of 16 simultaneous streams of DVD quality video over a 250-meter link with no loss of quality or delays. Note that the demonstration, impressive as it is, only used one quarter of the capacity of the link.
Dr. Jay Guo, director of the Wireless Technologies Laboratory at CSIRO, said that this breakthrough is just a first stage toward direct connections of up to 12 gigabits per second. "The system is suitable for situations where a high speed link is needed, but it is too expensive or logistically difficult to lay fiber, such as in congested urban environments, and across valleys and rivers," he said. "The system is also ideal for creating networks to meet short term needs such as emergencies and large events."
The CSIRO system operates at 85 GHz in the millimeter-wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum (above 55 GHz).
For more on the fast wireless link:
-see CSIRO website
Also: See what FierceWireless said about this new technology.