Rice University announced that its engineers have made a breakthrough in wireless technology that would allow mobile operators to double the throughput in their networks without adding any cellular towers.
Rice said its new "full-duplex" technology enables wireless devices to both "talk" and "listen" to wireless cell towers on the same frequency rather than two different frequencies that are used today.
"Our solution requires minimal new hardware, both for mobile devices and for networks, which is why we've attracted the attention of just about every wireless company in the world," said Ashutosh Sabharwal, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, in a release. "The bigger change will be developing new wireless standards for full-duplex. I expect people may start seeing this when carriers upgrade to 4.5G or 5G networks in just a few years."
Rice's team used MIMO antenna technology to send two signals that are capable of canceling each other at the receiving antenna.
Back in February, researchers at Stanford University said they accomplished the same thing via a noise cancellation technique that allows two nodes to exchange data simultaneously, which is implemented using a dual-antenna system much like how a noise-canceling earphone works.
For more:
- see this release
Related articles:
Rice University brings white-space network to Houston
Stanford University researchers claim Wi-Fi capacity breakthrough
New consortium aims to increase mobile broadband capacity tenfold
Smartphone capacity crunch to drive infrastructure spending