University secures funding for major high-speed data project
Engineers at Lancaster University in the UK are to lead a project developing the world’s first W-band wireless system, which will lead to a greater availability of cost-effective, high-speed internet.
The TWEETHER project will receive funding worth £2.8m (~€3.5m) from Horizon 2020 and should lead to breakthroughs in ‘millimetre wave technology’ for high-speed wireless mobile and fixed-point internet. Millimetre waves – extremely high frequency waves found in the spectrum between microwaves and infrared waves – are deemed to be the most promising and cost effective solution for the future.
Speaking about the investigation, project co-ordinator Professor Claudio Paoloni stated: “The enormous flux of data transferred via wireless networks, increasing at a super-high pace, makes today’s state-of-the-art networks quickly outdated. The huge spread of portable smartphones, tablets and the increasing demand of services hungry for data, such as high definition TV, videoconferencing and online games, are posing formidable challenges with the congestion of the available spectrum and the limits of present technology.”
The investigation will result in a powerful and compact transmission hub, based on an innovative travelling wave tube power amplifier and an advanced chipset in a compact terminal. After three years of design and development, the system will be tested in a real operating environment. The project consortium also includes partners in France, Germany and Spain.
The project has been sparked by the huge rise in demand for mobile data. Paoloni says that exploiting unused portions of the spectrum at higher frequencies would provide a solution to current glitches. Recent advances in the field of vacuum electron devices and solid state electronics using millimetre wave frequencies will assist research undertaken.
