4G Set To Go Faster

edited December 2004 in Science & Tech
NTT DoCoMo, Japan's biggest mobile communications carrier, has achieved a 1Gbit/s packet transmission speed using fourth-generation (4G) mobile communication equipment. The company said that it reached this landmark in August, although it's only just released the information.
The company said that the downlink speed of 1Gbit/s had been achieved in a laboratory experiment using VSF-Spread OFDM (Variable-Spreading-factor Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and MIMO (multiple-input-multiple-output) technology.

VSF-Spread OFDM enables downlink connections of extremely high speeds. MIMO is a technique for boosting wireless bandwidth and range by taking advantage of multiplexing, which involves sending information in multiple paths so that each carries more information.

The transmitted data was carried in a single beam, but the amount of data was too big for a single antenna so scientists used four antennas, each sending 250Mbit/s streams of data, for the experiment, said DoCoMo spokesman Takuya Ori.

"It was a lab experiment and it was indoors, so the distance wasn't that far," he said.

DoCoMo has been conducting 4G research since 1998. Earlier this year, the company demonstrated a maximum downstream data rate of 300Mbit/s with an average rate of 135Mbit/s. The data rate was achieved during a field experiment in a car running at a speed of 30 kilometres per hour at distances between 800 metres and 1 kilometre from 4G wireless base stations.
Source: TechWorld

Comments

  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited December 2004
    And why do we need internet speeds this fast on our phones?
  • MountainDewMountainDew Kentwood, MI
    edited December 2004
    forget the cell phones (overrated), think of wireless laptops with that connection speed!
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    And why do we need internet speeds this fast on our phones?
    So I can see your ugly mug and talk to you at the same time :P. It'll probably cause more traffic accidents than the old voice-only phones.

    Realistically though, portable computers are a lot more common in Japan than here. High speed wireless internet is probably a priority for them.

    Here in the states, we pay for each SMS message we send. Our service providers could learn a lesson...

    -drasnor :fold:
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