The following story:
The future is analog.
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have developed a transceiver that works in the 140 GHz range and can transmit data at up to 120 Gbps, that's about 15 gigabytes per second. By comparison, the fastest commercially available wireless technologies are theoretically limited to 30 Gbps (Wi-Fi 7) and 5 Gbps (5G mmWave). According to UC Irvine News, these new speeds could match most fiber optic cables used in data centers and other commercial applications, usually around at 100 Gbps. The team published their findings in two papers — the “bits-to-antenna” transmitter and the “antenna-to-bits” receiver — on the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.
“The Federal Communications Commission and 6G standards bodies are looking at the 100-gigahertz spectrum as the new frontier,” lead author Zisong Wang told the university publication. “But as such speeds, conventional transmitters that create signals using digital-to-analog converters are incredibly complex and power-hungry, and face what we call a DAC bottleneck.” The team replaced the DAC with three in-sync sub-transmitters, which only required 230 milliwatts to operate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Thursday January 29, @03:42PM (4 children)
>140 GHz range
>230 milliwatt
Up the power and you can uses it like those infrared lasers they use for crowd control that makes your skin feel like it's burning.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Zinho on Thursday January 29, @05:03PM (2 children)
At 2.14mm these signals are very close to infrared (IR lies between 780 nm and 1 mm). 140GHz is also being considered for automotive RADAR applications, and is in the 30-300GHz range used by millimter-wave scanners.
So, not only could it cook you a little, it has the potential to scan the inside of your house at finer resolution than the Microsoft Kinect ever did and maybe even see you naked through your clothes. Good times!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30, @01:41AM (1 child)
> ... scan the inside of your house
Brick house (real bricks), can it get any useful reflection back from the inside (assuming I stay away from the windows)?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinho on Sunday February 01, @10:04PM
I'd say probably not as an offhand estimate, but not enough studies have been done to say for sure.
Here's one I found that may shed some light: http://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10095773 [nsf.gov] (PDF warning)
That study found that glass attenuates 140GHz at about 14 Db/cm thickness, but drywall only ~1 Db/cm. No data on brick. Concrete block seems to block it quite well.
My main concern with having the inside of my house scanned is relevant for if I were to deploy it inside my house. The 140GHz waves are considered line-of-sight; it will mostly only work within the same room (they're having trouble getting it to work at all, for what it's worth).
While I cannot rule out having your home millimeter-wave wireless intercepted by a snooper pointing a receiver at your house, they're unlikely to be able to get high-res scans from the outside. An active scanner would give them a very good scan of your house's exterior, and any waves that penetrated your siding and drywall would likely be quite weak by the time they bounced back. A passive scanner might be able to read the faint reflections of your 140GHz signals to detect motion.
For reference, using WiFi reflections as a motion detector that works through walls is already a thing, [medium.com] and WiFi works better for this purpose since its longer wavelength penetrates walls better. Switching to 140GHz would actually be an improvement in privacy over WiFi against this specific threat.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday January 29, @05:13PM
You can focus lasers which makes them dangerous in very small areas that can move around really fast. Also your eye doesn't have very good cooling so it is easier to mess up than, like, your hand. But, I can emit a couple hundred watts and still shiver when its not super hot out, and laying in direct noon sunlight is roughly a thermal kilowatt per sq meter. This thing is probably not a serious threat.
I've certainly put my hand in front of waveguides and stuff at much higher power level and its just not that bad.
Something funny you can do with low enough noise figure receivers is do the radio telescope thing and pointing the antenna (or waveguide) at clear sky you'll see now noise and point it at the ground and you'll get 280K or so of measurable thermal noise (depending on weather LOL) and put your hand over the waveguide and receive 310K or so of noise. I bring that up because 140 GHz is getting to the point of its not going to pass thru human bodies and humans emit enough thermal noise that holding it up to my body MIGHT create enough noise to mess it up unless they have a fairly directional antenna.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Friday January 30, @04:52AM
But practically in real world usage, with many clients and multi-path interference and all the other problems, the speeds will be much less (even if the technology works, it'll take at least 20 years until most of the patents expire for it to see really widespread usage).
As pointed out in another comment, the wavelength is short enough that it may be feasible to perform creepy scans of your naked body (which will be done eventually if at all possible) - but at least the finest lead foil suit will prevent that.
Fibre optic always wins in the end, as all the bandwidth is always available in that optic fibre.