Wireless uploads of big files take for-ev-er. But researchers at Georgia Tech University have plans for an antenna made of crazy thin graphene that would let you transfer a whole terabit of data in just one second.
Within a metre, researchers could move a terabit per second, but in theory, from a closer range, you could move as much as 100 terabits a second. That’s about 100 HD movies in less time than it takes you make a cup of coffee. Graphene, you crazy.
MIT Technology Review explains how the antenna would be made:
Graphene could be shaped into narrow strips of between 10 and 100 nanometers wide and one micrometer long, allowing it to transmit and receive at the terahertz frequency, which roughly corresponds to those size scales. Electromagnetic waves in the terahertz frequency would then interact with plasmonic waves-oscillations of electrons at the surface of the graphene strip-to send and receive information.
Of course, this is just the preliminary groundwork on a piece of tech that doesn’t exactly exist yet. Next the Georgia Tech group will have to figure out manufacturing, and how to make the necessary components — signal generators, amplifiers and so forth — so the antennas will actually work. But the thought of lightning-fast wireless downloads is enough to be a little excited for the future. [MIT Technology Review]
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