Stefan Mileschin

Japanese researchers have emerged from their smoke filled labs having broken the record for wireless data transmission in the terahertz band.

Research, published in Electronics Letters, which we get for the spot the email in the spam puzzle, uses the T-ray band for data transmission.

T-ray is not a 1970's heavy rock-blues band which folded after a row with its drummer about artistic direction. Instead, it is a frequency band with lies between the microwave and far-infrared regions of the spectrum, between waking and sleeping - a sort of Twilight Zone of frequencies.

It is completely unregulated by telecommunications agencies. It uses frequencies from about 300 gigahertz to about 3THz and is used in research contexts. Terahertz waves penetrate many materials but use less energy and cause less damage.

But T-rays required too much gear and were considered too costly to be a plausible alternative.

According to the BBC, the researchers have created 3Gb/s transmission at 542GHz using a 1mm-square device which is what is known as a resonant tunnelling diode.

RTDs are designed such that this process makes the diode "resonate", which in the current work's design means it sprays out waves in the terahertz band.

http://news.techeye.net/science/japa...ss-data-record