Ultra-wideband Radio Rides A Beam Of Light
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
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Multiple high-definition videos and other data-rich services may soon stream through homes, offices, ships and planes via new hybrid optical/ultra-wideband-radio systems developed by European researchers.
Moshe Ran, Coordinator of the EU-funded project, UROOF (Photonic components for Ultra-wideband Radio Over Optical Fiber), has a vision. He wants to see streams of high-definition video and other high-bandwidth services flowing through homes, office buildings, and even ships and planes, through a happy marriage of optical and ultra-wideband radio technologies.
“It’s a natural combination that can bring a lot of advantages to the world,” says Ran.
The wireless signals that feed your Bluetooth earbud or let you surf the web from the corner coffee shop fade into the electronic background after ten metres or so. Starting in mid-2006, UROOF researchers set out to find an inexpensive way to stretch that range to hundreds or thousands of metres.
The researchers envisioned a hybrid system, in which ultra-wideband (UWB) radio signals could be transformed into light beams, relayed over long distances via inexpensive optical fibres, and then transformed back to radio again.
“You can’t extend the range over the air,” says Ran. “So if you want to overcome the limitations of the short range, using optical fibre is a very elegant way of doing it.”
The UROOF researchers decided to focus on UWB signals because they can carry a lot of data – some 480 megabits per second, or 20 times faster than dsl.
UROOF technology has the potential to increase broadband capacity by two or three orders of magnitude while at the same time addressing health and safety concerns by reducing signal intensity by a comparable amount.
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