Apparently some researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics and the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology have achieved a wireless transmission of 40 Gbit/s over a distance of one kilometre. Yikes, that is a new world record.
How?
Apparently they used a high frequency range between 200 and 280 GHz enables the fast transmission of large volumes of data and compact equipment. The design also allows for compatibility with fiber optic cables.
40Gbit/s … yep, that is indeed a wireless speed I could sign up for. Least you not get it, that is more that one complete DVD per second.
What also makes this rather interesting is that a high performance system such as this would also have the advantage of bit transparency. Translation: the glass fibre signal could be fed directly, without energy-consuming transcoding, into a radio link and then back again into glass fibre at the other side. Oh and this is just the start of what may be possible, they could improve the spectral efficiency by using more complex modulation formats or perhaps by combining several channels, i.e. multiplexing.
Links
If curious, then you will find more details here.