Gigabit Wireless via Light Waves

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The folks at Penn State have developed a wireless technology that uses light waves. What makes this different is that no direct line of sight is needed to transmit data. As long as you don’t have walls painted flat black, the data will literally bounce off the walls and be picked up by a receiver.

Sending information via light waves either in physical light guides or wirelessly is not new, but existing wireless systems either require direct line of sight or are diffused and have low signal strength. The researchers chose to take a different approach using multi-element transmitters and multi-branch optical receivers in a quasi-diffuse configuration.
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Neat. Possibly useless for multi-room networking but at the same time, leakage outside your walls is eliminated.
 
I wonder if this ends up producing a strobing effect. How will it affect individuals with epilepsy? Hmm...
 
Too many electromagnetic radioactive waves. Everyone wonders why cancer is the leading cause of death now. lol
 
Flexion said:
I wonder if this ends up producing a strobing effect. How will it affect individuals with epilepsy? Hmm...
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well even if they use visible light I would imagine that the frequency would be well beyond what we would be affected by. A raster line on a CRT is invisible to the human eye at mere 120hz.
 
This will be great for things like video players connecting to TVs (just make sure the connected light shows up and you're connected!) and for other fixed-position devices, but I wouldn't expect it to end up in many mobile devices.

As a bonus, instead of people taping aluminum foil to their antenna for better signal, they'll be taping 8.5x11 pieces of white paper to their walls to ensure a good light bounce.
 
This is interesting, albeit a very limited use. Especially for those wanting dark media rooms. I would imagine that while it may bounce off of anything non-black, it might not have as good a reflection for a dark brown as it does for pure white.
 
HoppyChris said:
...
As a bonus, instead of people taping aluminum foil to their antenna for better signal, they'll be taping 8.5x11 pieces of white paper to their walls to ensure a good light bounce.
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bahaha. The funniest part is that I have no doubt that it would/will be true.

Also, to those worried about dark rooms and whatever else... they are NOT using the visible light spectrum.
 
Unless, of course, you meant dark rooms as in the kind with black paint.
 
Flexion said:
I wonder if this ends up producing a strobing effect. How will it affect individuals with epilepsy? Hmm...
Click to expand...

My guess is that it will be on some wave length we can't see, like maybe UV, although with UV, then you have problems with skin cancer.:eek:

Still neat though, and could have some practical applications for businesses, also as light is immune to the noise problems radio waves have, this could mean increased distance, although I'm not sure how you could use a repeater to boost the signal if needed.
 
this sounds like a much better way to do wireless hdmi then using radio waves. and we already have good wireless networking, and we like that it goes through walls.
 
Technically this is really the exact same as regular "wireless", just at a lower frequency? The only reason you have line of sight issue with "light" is because its not high enough frequency to penetrate solid objects like radio waves can.

EDIT: thats actually the selling point, they say you dont have to worry about stray signals, thus physical security instead of encryption security.

One advantage I can see from a company point of view is that the light spectrum isn't owned by the government and thus you don't have to license or list your product.
 
westrock2000 said:
The only reason you have line of sight issue with "light" is because its not high enough frequency to penetrate solid objects like radio waves can.
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Radio waves are measured in kilohertz of megahertz.
Visible light is in the 100s of terahertz range.
Gamma rays are even higher.
 
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