The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS in Dresden presented wireless communication modules developed to transfer data at speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second over distances of up to 10 meters.The wireless communication technology developed by Fraunhofer scientists at IPMS can do much more than complement or replace wired transmission technologies. With a
data rate of 1 Gigabit per second, the technology surpasses conventional wireless technologies such as WLAN, making it ideal for all application areas where large volumes of data need to be transmitted in near real-time.
The solution developed by Fraunhofer IPMS uses light in the infrared range as a wireless transmission medium. This so-called optical wireless communication utilizes the internationally unregulated light spectrum with bandwidths of several gigabits per second and—provided there are no obstructions between the transmitter and receiver—has the potential to transmit data up to ten times faster than existing wireless solutions, with minimal bit error rates (<10⁻⁹). It achieves this by using only 15 percent of the energy per byte of data transmitted by the user.
The controllerless transceiver module combines an optical transceiver and a protocol controller with a Gigabit Ethernet interface. Therefore, it can be easily integrated into common industrial systems.
