University of California-Irvine scientists chasing the “Holy Grail” in high-speed wireless communications technology have moved a major step forward by developing silicon chips that are at least four times faster than the speed of the upcoming 5G wireless standard.
Commercialization of the wireless transceiver could be a year or two down the road, the project leader said.
“I think this is going to change the way that transmitters and receivers are designed,” Professor Payam Heydari told the Business Journal. “It is breakthrough technology.”
The wireless transceiver allows ultra-fast data processing and less energy consumption. That means boosting radio frequencies to the 100-gigahertz range, quadruple the speed of 5G, the university said in a statement earlier this month.
“This is the Holy Grail of the high-speed wireless communications industry,” said Heydari, who led the team of electrical engineers at UCI’s Nanoscale Communication Integrated Circuits Labs.
The 4.4-millimeter-square silicon chip is capable of processing digital signals significantly faster and more energy efficiently because of its unique digital-analog architecture.
6G Standard
Heydari said he is talking to a number of entrepreneurs now.
“This idea is getting lots of exposure,” he said. “Operating in a higher frequency means that you and I, and everyone else can be given a bigger chunk of the bandwidth offered by carriers.”
He said that academic researchers and communications circuit engineers have long wanted to know if wireless systems are capable of the high performance and speeds of fiber-optic networks.
“If such a possibility could come to fruition, it would transform the telecommunications industry, because wireless infrastructure brings about many advantages over wired systems,” Heydari said.
TowerJazz and STMicroelectronics provided semiconductor fabrication services to support the research project.
Lower Cost Option
Having transmitters and receivers that can handle such high-frequency data communications is going to be vital in ushering in a new wireless era, the university said in a news release.
Heydari said that in addition to enabling the transmission of signals in the range of 100 gigahertz, the transceiver’s unique layout allows it to consume considerably less energy than current systems at a reduced overall cost.
“Our innovation eliminates the need for miles of fiber-optic cables in data centers, so data farm operators can do ultra-fast wireless transfer and save considerable money on hardware, cooling and power,” said co-author Huan Wang, a UCI doctoral student in electrical engineering and computer science and an NCIC Labs member.
