Japanese Company revives infrared: Claims mind-boggling speeds!

We hated infrared alright. We could have lived with all the fuss involved; oh hell, we even could have even lived with the terrible transfer speeds. But the almost inevitable failures and errors, we didn't have time for those. So it was goodbye IR and welcome Bluetooth, and later WiFi.

kddi infrared

And apparently everybody moved along except a Japanese tech company, it stuck out with the obsolete technology and has given it a new life, or so it says. KDDI R&D Laboratories claims that it has upgraded the IR transfer rates to bring it in sync with the new standards. The firm claims that new IR can deliver speeds up to 1 GBps. And to top it off, it has even managed to add a layer of stability, which would remove all the transfer-failures.

By replacing the old LEDs with a new semiconductor laser, KDDI has given a new lease of life to the old technique. Since the lasers blink at far greater speeds than the LEDs, they provide for greater transfer speeds than before. Also a nonvolatile memory added to the IR device stores data during the transfer resulting in minimal failures.

These are some high claims. And the company believes that its IR could make a comeback in cell phones and PCs. We are not too sure about that. And yet, a GB in a second? We could definitely dig that!

Via