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Munich (pte025/09.12.2004/13:00) - German electronics giant Siemens http://www.siemens.com has set a world record for the transferral of data via mobile communications. Combining an "intelligent antenna system" consisting of three transmitting and four receiving antennas with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), researchers achieved a record-setting high speed of one gigabit per second (1,000 megabits per second). This is roughly twenty times faster than the speeds at which Wireless Lan (WLAN) networks offer their fastest wireless links to mobile devices.
Together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, the Siemens researchers used a basic frequency of five gigahertz (GHz) and a bandwidth of 100 megahertz (MHz). The OFDM transmission method that they employed protects signals against most types of interference, such as echoes that are produced when the signals reflect off buildings. Additionally, the researchers used a MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) system made up of multiple antennas, which transmits different flows of data over one and the same radio channel and frequency band.
In contrast to conventional individual antennas, which each transmit on a separate frequency, the MIMO method enables data rates to be multiplied by making significantly more efficient use of the costly frequency band resource. Multiple-antenna systems require a very high computing power at the receiving end, which currently exceeds the capabilities of typical mobile communication chips. However, the scientists developed new and optimised signal processing algorithms and implemented them on the hardware modules available today. According to the experts, in around ten years time, the need for transmission capacities of this size for voice, data, image and multimedia will rise by a factor of 10.
"Future mobile communication systems will have to utilise the frequency band as efficiently as possible, with the lowest possible transmit power," explained Christoph Caselitz, President of the Mobile Networks Divisions at Siemens. "With our experimental system, we've been able to demonstrate how powerful intelligent antennas can be in combination with OFDM. In doing so, we've created a major module for future mobile communication systems," he added.
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