100x Faster WiFi Closer to Reality

National ICT Australia (NICTA), an Australian ICT research and commercialisation organisation, has spun-out its Gigabit Wireless project into a new startup.

The plan is to start commercialising their technology, according to David Skellern, the research body’s Chief Executive Officer.

NICTA’s Ultra-High Speed Wireless Project (formerly known as GiFi) was the world’s first to integrate a transceiver on a single chip operating at 60GHz on the CMOS. That technology is now one step closer to hitting the market, which means we’re all one step closer to having the super-fast Wireless connections we’ve always wanted.

NICTA says that short-range wireless technologies have long been seen as a solution, however most cannot deliver the multi-gigabit speeds needed to transmit high-quality video signals.  Those that can have been prohibitively expensive. NICTA’s research team has overcome both these challenges. The end result is a wireless chip that is 100 times faster than current WiFi chips, which can be built for a tenth of their cost.

 Between the upcoming 802.11ad conference (which will try to sort out standards for the prototcol) and the Wireless Gigabyte Alliance, there’s a lot of momentum in the space at the moment. Alot of that has to do with the need to shift large amounts of data (e.g. HD video) around wirelessly without having the wireless connection as a bottleneck and people wanting to kill off the need for wired networks wherever possible.

NICTA’s advances mean that the team are winning the race to get that all important Gigabit Wireless technology into the hands of consumers.