New world record in radio transmission achieved

German scientists have achieved a new world record in wireless data transmission by sending the contents of a conventional DVD in under ten seconds using radio waves.
With a data rate of 6 Gigabit per second, researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF achieved the record data transmission on a stretch between Cologne and the 36.7 km distant town of Wachtberg in Germany.
The extremely high data rates of 6 Gbit/s was achieved through efficient transmitters and receivers at a radio frequency of 71-76 GigaHertz in the so-called E band, regulated for terrestrial and satellite broadcasting.

The transmission of high quantities of data by radio over large distances serves a high number of important application areas - the next generation of satellite communication requires an ever-increasing data offload from Earth observation satellites down to Earth.
The advance would make supplying fast internet to rural areas and remote regions possible. About 250 Internet connections can be supplied with 24 Megabit per second, researchers said.
Terrestrial radio transmissions may be suitable as a cost-effective replacement for deployment of optical fibre or as ad-hoc networks in the case of crises and catastrophe, and for connecting base stations in the backhaul of mobile communication systems.

The unabatedly increasing demand for ever-higher data rates in fibre-based and wireless communication networks can only be mastered by technological innovations in the network infrastructure.

Modern developments such as the Internet of Things are only in their early stages. They will demand unprecedented aggregated data quantities.
Their processing and transmission in cloud-based services is already today taking the communication infrastructure to its limits.
In satellite communication as well, the progress in Earth observation and space research as well as plans for a planet-scale satellite network are leading to yet unsolved challenges for the communication infrastructure.