While both Bluetooth and WiFi are fully qualified to handle relatively small and slow transfers in the home network or between devices, they are not quite capable of handling streams of HD media. Scientists at Georgia Electronic Design Center have now demonstrated a WiFi capable of this. Using an extremely high frequency, 60 GHz, they were able to reach a transfer rate at 15 Gbit/s over a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gbps at 2 meters and 5 Gbps at 5 meters. The higher frequency allows for higher transfer rates, but it also limits the range considerably.
The obstacle is now to create a chip that supports this technology and is still affordable. Professor Joy Laskar, who is the head of the project, is determined to design a chip costing far less than $10, and the group have a new prototype in the works.
Even though the initial demonstration was over a distance of 1 meter, Laskar believes they will be able to make the technology work more than distances ten times of that, up to 11 meter. However with these frequencies there is also a problem with propagation losses, which makes it unfeasible for any kind of long-range transfers. As soon as the signals bumps into an object the signal strength will drop like the stock market in 1929. It may work well in the home, in a single room, but the industrial applications are quite limited.
