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Friday, January 5, 2018

Increasing internet speeds by a thousandfold

©Mark Ollig

Let’s start the first column of the new year with an eye-opening disclosure about a rare mineral that could bring a revolutionary change to the internet.

Perovskite, also known as calcium titanium oxide, is a mineral discovered and mined in the late 1830s in Russia. It is named in honor of Count Lev Alekseevich Perovski, who was a mineralogist and the head of the Ministry of Regions in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The chemical formula for perovskite is CaTiO3.

This mineral is cube-shaped with a semi-metallic shine, and contains brown, gray, black, yellow, reddish-brown, and orange shades of color.

Perovskite originates from the Earth’s mantle layer.

Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and the Magnet Cove in the state of Arkansas also mine perovskite.

The use of perovskite, because of its exceptional optical and electrical compatibility properties, is being tested as a layering substrate in the construction of clean-energy solar panels.

The reason this mineral has created so much excitement for use as an internet networking resource, is its superconductivity properties for transmitting data using light.

Currently, light-emitting lasers transmit data using electricity.

It was found that reliable, ultra-fast data transmission speed occurs when passing extremely high-frequency light wave spectrum levels through perovskite wafers operating at the terahertz frequency spectrum level 1 Terahertz (1THz), which equals 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) hertz or cycles per second.

A side note: Heinrich Hertz, a 19th-century German physicist who proved the theory of electromagnetism radiations, is the person “hertz” is named after.

Previous testing with perovskite required the use of high-powered lasers, an option not economically feasible for commercial service providers.

Recently, instead of using lasers, the transfer of data when embedded within light waves in the terahertz frequency wave range was successfully tested using a low-cost halogen lamp and fine layers of perovskite.

Researchers found by using the halogen lamp and various colors of light, multiple frequency waves passing through the perovskite were modifiable within the 1THz range – which is an increase of 1,000 times the data transfer rate of currently-used electronic systems.

It is anticipated perovskite will be used to increase internet data speeds, and for next-generation wireless communications, namely future generation cellular data.

The average time-span between cellular technology generations, such as we have seen with 2, 3, 4, and soon-to-be 5G, is about 10 years.

Currently, 4G uses the 2 to 8 GHz (gigahertz) cellular frequency band range.

It is possible we may see future generation 6 or 7G data transmitters incorporating perovskite, and if this happens, smartphones may be operating at 10,000 GHz (depending on bandwidth), which opens a whole new software applications technology door.

Incredible speeds like this necessitate communication networks to overcome technical transmission obstacles which cause the slowdown (latency) of information/data being sent and received.

Such an increase in bandwidth and data speed requires exceptionally-improved software and hardware infrastructure upgrading for operating a new, robust, and reliable next-generation communications networking system.

So, how long before we see our home/business internet and wireless cell/smartphone data speeds increase a thousandfold?

Right now, it is looking to be at least 10 to 15 years until we can download full-length, high-definition movies in less than the blink of an eye using perovskite wafer layers.

Hopefully, I’ll be writing a column about it.

In the meantime, I have a feeling there will be plenty of new high-tech marvels revealed to us during this new year.





















Photo Attribution: Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0