Wireless communication at a billion bits per second?

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Researchers have developed the world's first millimetre wave direct conversion architecture using a frequency of 60GHz and capable of achieving a multi-Gb/s data rate – billions of bits per second.

This is a considerable increase over current Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) using 2.4/5GHz, which is limited to around 50Mb/s – a few hundred million bits per second. A team from the Tokyo Institute of Technology created the millimetre wave direct transceiver using an injection locked oscillator, employing a 65nm cmos process. To improve phase noise, an injection locking technique was developed and applied to the transceiver. According to the researchers, by combining a 20GHz phase locked loop with a 60GHz quadrature injection locked oscillator, it has been possible to achieve a phase noise of - 95 dBc/Hz@1MHz offset at 60GHz. The transceiver is said to be capable of a range of modulation schemes including BPSK/QPSK/8PSK/16QAM, and a data rate of 11Gb/s is achieved by 16QAM. The maximum communication distance is 2.7m and the power consumption is 252mW for transmitting and 172mW for receiving. The chip has been designed for IEEE 802.15.3c and IEEE 802.11ad conformance and can be integrated into a smart phone with 6Gb/s wireless data rate.