GiFi-Latest Research In Wireless Technology

Researchers of Melbourne University has come up with a wireless technology which promises high speed short range data transfers with speeds of upto 5 Gbps within a radius of 10 meters. The new wireless technology is named GiFi operates on the 60GHz frequency band, which is currently mostly unused. The GiFi Chip developed by the Australian researchers measures 5mm square and is manufactured using existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, the same system that is currently used to print silicon chips.The best part about this new technology is its cost effectiveness and power consumption, it only consumes 2 watts of power for its operation with antenna(1mm) included and the development of Gi-Fi chip costs approximately $10( Rs 380) to manufacture.In theory this technology would transfers GB’s of your fav high definition movies in seconds. So GiFi can be considered as a challenger to Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi and could find applications ranging from new mobile phones to consumer electronics.Mass production of the technology might not start before 2009.

New Cell Phone Batteries to Last for Months

Researchers from Stanford University have discovered a new way to use silicon nanowires in rechargeable batteries that power mobile phones, laptops,video cameras, iPods and other similar devices. The new batteries will be able to store up to ten times more electrical power than existing Li-Ion batteries. "It's not a small improvement. It's a revolutionary development", said Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who lead the research for the new battery technology. Thanks to the new concept, a mobile phone that now has a stand-by time of 6 days could operate for 60 days with a single full battery charge. The same goes for laptops, video cameras and other devices – they will be able to provide a much longer operating time compared to the one they are currently capable of. A standard Li-ion battery has an electrical storage capacity limited by the amount of lithium that can be retained in the battery's anode, usually made of carbon. When made of silicon, the anode can retain much more lithium, but silicon's disadvantage is that it pulverizes during charging cycles, lowering the battery's performance and life-cycle. The Stanford research team found a way to avoid this problem, by leveraging on nanotechnology. To store lithium, they use silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a paper sheet. When soaking up lithium, the nanowires grow four times their size and then come back to normality, but due to their extremely small wired shape, they don't fracture in time. Hence silicon is better than carbon after all, it only has to be used as nanowires. This expanded storage capacity that Li-ion batteries proved to be capable of could make them appropriate for electrical cars and, as Mr. Yi Cui believes, also for homes and offices, where they could be used to store electricity produced by rooftop solar panels. Although the new batteries are not yet available, the Stanford team has filed for a patent and, hopefully, the batteries will start to be manufactured in 2008. Charging your mobile phone only six times a year – imagine that!

3 TB Hard Disk planned by 2010 by Western Digital

Western Digital, a leading maker of hard disk drives, has announced that it had achieve record areal density using its perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology. The achievement will allow the company to product 3TB hard disk drives in about three years time.Following WD’s growing investments in technology the past five years, the company achieved 520Gb/inch² using its own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology. This level of density produces a 3.5” hard drive storing 640GB-per-platter and single hard drive capacities as large as 3TB. Based on the industry’s current density growth rate of more than 40% per year, those capacities are expected to be available in the 2010 time frame.Earlier this month Hitachi-GST also indicated that it expected to achieve areal density of 500Gb/inch² – 1Tb/inch² using perpendicular magnetic recording and current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto resistive (CPP-GMR) heads and touted 4TB hard disk drives (HDDs) in 2011.WD demonstrated 520Gb/inch² density in its Magnetic Head Operation labs in Fremont, California, earlier this month.“The milestone was realized using our current-technology MgO reader, illustrating the extendibility of PMR-TuMR head technology generations into the future,” said Hossein Moghadam, chief technology officer for WD.