Wi-Fiber technology

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Abstract:
A new wireless technology could beat fiber optics for speed in some applications. Atop each of the Trump towers in New York City, there s a new type of wireless transmitter and receiver that can send and receive data at rates of more than one gigabit per second -- fast enough to stream 90 minutes of video from one tower to the next, more than one mile apart, in less than six seconds.
By comparison, the same video sent over a DSL or cable Internet connection would take almost an hour to download. This system is dubbed WiFiber by its creator, Giga Beam, a Virginia-based telecommunications startup. Although the technology is wireless, the company s approach -- high-speed data transferring across a point-to-point network -- is more of an alternative to fiber optics, than to Wi-Fi or Wi-Max, says John Krzywicki, the company s vice president of marketing.
And it s best suited for highly specific data delivery situations. This kind of point-to-point wireless technology could be used in situations where digging fiber-optic trenches would disrupt an environment, their cost be prohibitive, or the installation process take too long, as in extending communications networks in cities, on battlefields, or after a disaster.
1. INTRODUCTION
Data transmission, digital transmission or digital communications is the physical transfer of data (a digital bit stream) over a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication channel. Examples of such channels are copper wires, optical fibers, wireless communication channels, and storage media. The data is represented as an electromagnetic signal, such as an electrical voltage, radio wave, microwave or infrared signal.
For high rate of data transmission we commonly use optical fibers. Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than other forms of communication. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss and are also immune to electromagnetic interference. Fibers are also used for illumination, and are wrapped in bundles so they can be used to carry images, thus allowing viewing in tight spaces. But this technology also have many disadvantages such as price, fragility etc.
To overcome these disadvantages, GIGABEAM called a Virginian telecommunication startup introduced a new technology called WiFiber. This is a wireless technology which is used for data transmission between two points. This is a true substitute for fiber technology. It is used now for high specific data transmission. It actually succeeded to sit on the place of fiber optics in our world. WiFiber operates in the 71-76, 81-86, and 92-95GHz frequencies to avoid interference and so that the signal is less impeded by light rain or fog than current high-speed wireless competitors.
In here I tried to find out the applications of WiFiber technology in our daily life. For that I made a brief study about that topic and it is described under following sections. In here the first section gives the simple introduction to WiFiber and it follows by the disadvantages of optical fiber, and the about wireless technology. In the second section we can discuss about the features about WiFiber. Is followed by the technical and hardware details of WiFiber technology, includes system details, antenna details etc. then next section describes about the applications of WiFiber technology in our modern life. And in the last section, I discuss possibilities for extending the current work and offer concluding remarks.
2. WIFIBER
This system is dubbed "WiFiber" by its creator, GigaBeam, a Virginia-based telecommunications startup. Although the technology is wireless, the company's approach -- high-speed data transferring across a point-to-point network -- is more of an alternative to fiber optics, than to Wi-Fi or Wi-Max, says John Krzywicki, the company's vice president of marketing. And it's best suited for highly specific data delivery situations. This kind of point-to-point wireless technology could be used in situations where digging fiber-optic trenches would disrupt an environment, their cost be prohibitive, or the installation process take too long, as in extending communications networks in cities, on battlefields, or after a disaster. To understand about WiFiber we need to know about Optical fiber.
2.1 Optical Fiber
Optical fibres are long, thin strands of very pure glass. They have the diameter of around that of a human hair. They are arranged in bundles called optical cables and used to transmit light signals over long distances. Optical fibres are commonly used in telecommunication systems, as well as in illumination, sensors, and imaging optics. Fibre optics technology is the branch of science and engineering concerned with such optical fibres. But this technology has some limitations.
Some of the disadvantages of optical fibers are:
Price –
Even though the raw material for making optical fibres, sand, is abundant and cheap, optical fibres are still more expensive per metre than copper. Although, one fibre can carry many more signals than a single copper cable and the large transmission distances mean that fewer expensive repeaters are required.
Fragility –
Optical fibres are more fragile than electrical wires.
Affected by chemicals –
The glass can be affected by various chemicals including hydrogen gas (a problem in underwater cables.)
Opaqueness –
Despite extensive military use it is known that most fibres become opaque when exposed to radiation.
Requires special skills –
Optical fibres cannot be joined together as easily as copper cable and requires additional training of personnel and expensive precision splicing and measurement equipment.
These limitations will increase when we use this optical fiber technique for a long data transmission. That means in the case of data is transmitted between two points which they are more than 1 mile apart. By doing so, we need to face many physical challenges also. Installing fiber optics is not a simple work. It need many mechanical effort such as digging the ground, creating trenches, installing long optical fiber wires in the trenches, burying these fibers etc. so when we increase the distance between the end nodes, the complexity of work also increase.
2.2 Wireless Data Transmission
Blasting beams of data through free space is not a new idea. LightPointe and Proxim Wireless also provide such services. We know this is the basic principle of all wireless communication. In wireless data transmission we transmitted data in a particular frequency. And the receiver receives this transmitted data and converted it into its original form. This is what happens in all technologies.
Commonly almost all wireless technologies uses the data transmission frequency around or lesser than 5 Ghertz. Due to this, there is a huge traffic forms in such a range. That is why other wireless technologies cannot transmit data at high data rate. So we cannot use such technologies for high specific data transmissions. So for high data rate transmission, we need a low traffic region of electromagnetic spectrum.