28 January 2008

New Life for the Old IrDA Technology

Anyone remember the days before the Bluetooth, before the Nokia 7650, before the Wi-Fi era? Times when we actually used small diodes hidden behind the little dark plastic windows to transfer files between our phones and other gadgets?

Times when it was necessary to have a good electronic skills and good soldering station to get it to work and to transfer some files between the phone and comp?

If you do you’ll also recall that IR transfers were horribly slow with a tendency to failure very often?

Sure, after 10 years of continuous development and improvement BT is the best short range transfer technology at the moment but still it’s intriguing to hear that a Japanese firm has upgraded the invisible light technology to make it fit for the modern wireless age.

According to KDDI R&D Laboratories, its new technique [Japanese; PDF] ups the IR transfer speed to 1Gbps, which is 250 times the old theoretical limit of 4Mbps.

Not only that, it has added a layer of stability that should eliminate those old scenes where would-be IR exchangers ended up saying “Oh screw this - just tell me your number instead.”

The new IR method relies on swapping the old LED for a new semiconductor laser that can ‘blink’ far faster than any diode (think of a super-fast semaphore lamp).

Throw in a chunk of nonvolatile memory for storing data during transfers and Bob’s your high-speed data-chucking uncle.

KDDI suggests the new infrared technology could be used in PCs and mobile devices, particularly phones.

If its claims of transferring a full CD of music in under a second prove accurate, then we’re looking a seriously useful revival of some old gadgetry.