Nearly two centuries after Doctor Frankenstein – the fervent young man in Mary Shelley’s gothic novel – proclaimed that he would walk through the footsteps of earlier scientists in bringing his creature to life, wireless engineers are taking a similar route to innovation.
Engineers have been tweaking the wireless components used to access lower frequency bands in an attempt to handle spectrum that has long avoided the tentacles of wireless data. The idea is to divert huge amounts of data clogging the airwaves into higher frequency bands like millimeter waves.
The latest example of that work came from a research team from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics and the University of Stuttgart. The engineers invented a radio that could transmit data around six gigabits per second over almost 40 kilometers. The Fraunhofer Institute called the accomplished "a world record in terrestrial radio transmission.”
Using highly-efficient transmitters and receivers, the radio transferred the entire contents of a DVD in less than 10 seconds. The research team exploited part of the wireless spectrum known as the E band. Occupying the range between 71 and 76 GHz, the frequency band is normally reserved for broadcast and satellite television signals.
That spectrum falls within the range of millimeter waves, which have quickly turned into the next frontier for wireless carriers seeking faster download speeds and greater network capacity. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has singled out the 73 GHz as one of the initial candidate for licensing.
Ingmar Kalfass from the Institute of Robust Power Semiconductor Systems from the University of Stuttgart led the research team, which created two new high-frequency designs to help speed the radio transmission.
The first technology was located in the transmitter, where amplifiers based on gallium-nitride increased the power of the broadband signal to 1 watt. That relatively high power helped to account for the tendency of millimeter waves to weaken over long distances. The transmitter, located in the town of Cologne, Germany, sent out the signal through a parabolic antenna.
