Wednesday, 24 October 2012 19:51

Researchers discover software algorithm to accelerate Wi-Fi speeds 10 times

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Researchers at several prestigious universities like MIT, the University of Porto in Portugal, Harvard, Caltech and the Technical University of Munich, have managed to increase the throughput of existing wireless networks by ten times. They have done it without adding base stations, expanding bandwidth range or boosting the power of the transmitter. Instead, they used a mathematical formula that eliminates the need to re-send lost packets, which are blamed for network congestion and the reduction of useful bandwidth.

The new technology not only multiplies the efficiency of wireless networks, but also allows interleaving of data transmissions from Wi-Fi and LTE networks. Testing Wi-Fi networks at MIT, where on average 2% of network packets are lost in the wireless transmission showed an increase in the average throughput from 1 megabit per second to an average of 16 megabits per second, the calculated minimum guaranteed throughput increase is 1000%, therefore - tenfold.

This technology is changing the way in which data packets are sent. Instead of sending a separate packet, it sends an arithmetic equation that describes a series of packages. If a package is lost in transmission, instead of sending the request to the network to send it again, the receiver can reconstruct the missing package by himself. As the equations are linear, and therefore very simple, processor requirements at both ends of the process are almost unnoticeable. For now, the technology has been licensed by several networks and IT companies. You can expect new chips that support it or software patches that will deliver this technology on our devices in a very short time.

[Ed – The concept of making wireless more robust has been in the works for a long time, but this is something of a new twist on the idea. What we are seeing here is something that not only helps reduce lost packets, but also improves base performance simply by streamlining the process of reconstructing the file or other data. We will be reaching out to some of the companies that we work with to see what their plans are and will follow as soon as we have more information.]

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Read 3896 times Last modified on Wednesday, 24 October 2012 20:26

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