CityU to develop system to match WiGig technology

Imagine being able to access data at speeds nearly 50 times faster than Wi-fi, at around seven gigabytes (GB) per second. The dream may not be far off: City University researchers say it will be on the market in two years.

An 11-member team led by Dr Xue Quan, deputy director of the university's State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, is developing a high-speed wireless data transceiver system that would apply an existing technology called WiGig, which allows multigigabyte-speed transmissions.

The team has received project funding of HK$20 million from the government.

WiGig is a wireless standard that runs over the unlicensed 60 gigahertz (GHz) frequency band - a large bandwidth that would allow larger or more files to be transmitted at higher speeds. Many scientists worldwide are developing WiGig systems.

By contrast, the high-speed wireless data transmission rate is only in megabytes per second, and Wi-fi system bandwidths are just 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

The CityU team's millimeter-wave silicon transceiver integrates three key parts: an array of antennae, a filter for minimising interference and a power amplifier for high-frequency transmission. However, the point-to-point transmission is limited to within only 10 metres.