Scientists at the University of California, Irvine pave the way for next-generation mobile communications

Electrical engineers at the University of California, Irvine (https://uci.edu/) have developed a new transceiver with a frequency of 140 gigahertz. This enables data transfer rates that can compete with those of fibre optic cables.

For example, it is sufficient to transfer several films in HD in a matter of seconds. They have thus laid the foundation for the transition to 6G and beyond data transmission protocols.

The dawn of a new computer era

Experts are certain that transmitters and receivers capable of processing such high-frequency data will be crucial in ushering in a new era dominated by internet-enabled products, autonomous vehicles and AI edge computing, which will enable artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning applications to run on local devices.

The architecture combines digital and analogue processing. The result is a silicon chip system (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11344822) that includes both a transmitter and a receiver and can process digital signals significantly faster and more energy-efficiently than previously available technologies. ‘We refer to this technology as a “wireless fibre patch cord” because it offers the high transmission speed of fibre optics without physical cables,’ says expert Payam Heydari (https://payamheydari.eng.uci.edu/).

The professor of electrical engineering and computer science adds: ‘By operating in the F-band – a frequency range well above current 5G standards – we can offer enormous bandwidths that will revolutionise communication between machines, robots and data centres.’

Reducing power

“We realised that we had to fundamentally rethink the circuit topology (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10833751) in order to achieve the elusive milestone of 100 gigabits per second – that’s 100 times the speed of current wireless devices – without melting the chip. We envisioned novel, fully analogue architectures that would overcome the serious power consumption trade-offs that plague high-speed designs,” said Heydari.

According to the team, the boundary between digital and analogue must shift in order to achieve extreme transmission speeds. So they moved the heavy lifting to the analogue domain. ‘If we had stuck with traditional methods, the battery life of next-generation devices would be depleted within minutes.’ The transceiver prevents this by performing complex calculations analogically instead of energy-intensive digitally.