Innovative millimetre wave communications to be demonstrated at London exhibition

10 June 2014 Wireless data connections that exploit millimetre wave radio spectrum (30GHz to 300GHz) are expected to be used in worldwide 5G networks from 2020. The University of Bristol's Communication Systems and Networks research group has partnered with Bristol start-up Blu Wireless Technology (BWT) to develop this technology and they will demonstrate their innovative work at the Small Cells World Summit in London this week [10-12 June]. Millimetre wave radios use much higher carrier frequencies than those in current systems, such as 4G and Wi-Fi. The University and BWT radios transmit data approximately 50 times faster than the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi standard. At 60GHz there is significantly more unallocated spectrum, and this opens up the possibility of multi-Gigabit data rates to future mobile terminals. The challenge at 60GHz is how to overcome the additional signal losses. If transmit powers and antenna gains were equal, at 60GHz the received signal would be 1000x weaker than a Wi-Fi signal.