The multi-gigabit wireless technology we told you about last week has a lot of potential to make the near future less tedious, as we transfer more and more high-quality digital data from device to device and attempt to send high-definition video wirelessly from storage devices to televisions and monitors.

But it turns out that this new technology is not exactly a replacement for all our wired woes that the initial press release made it out to be.

To clear things up and to further illuminate just how this emerging tech works, we interviewed the lead researcher on the project, Georgia Electronic Design Center Director, Professor Joy Laskar, via email.

PC Magazine: First, could you describe for our readers just what you're trying to do with this technology?

Our focus is upon very high wireless-data throughput; in this case, 5 to 20 Gbits/s. The applications include things like data synchronization: For example, it takes many minutes to move music or video onto my iPod. Our technology reduces that to a few seconds (less than 10). [Also), uncompressed video distribution: moving video etc. around a room or workplace.

Both of the above applications are not achievable with today's wireless technology or on the roadmap for existing 802.11x or UWB roadmaps. Perhaps even more important, we can reduce the overhead/power required to transmit data, i.e. energy per bit. We've established the world benchmarks for both throughput (15 Gbit/s) and energy per bit (in the pJ/bit range, which is roughly 4 orders of magnitude lower than more established wireless standards.). So really, our technology is focused on new applications or frontiers for wireless.

Read the rest of this story at Gearlog: "Ga. Tech Prof Explains Multi-Gigabit Wireless Tech"