Indian-origin engineer doubles Wi-Fi speed in technological breakthrough

Researchers have developed a novel technology that can double Wi-Fi speeds with a single antenna, a breakthrough that could revolutionize the field of telecommunications.

This is the first time researchers from Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science have integrated a non-reciprocal circulator and a full-duplex radio on a nanoscale silicon chip.

The team, led by Associate Professor Harish Krishnaswamy, developed the technology that needs only one antenna, thus enabling an even smaller overall system.

“This technology could revolutionise the field of telecommunications,” said Krishnaswamy, director of the Columbia High-Speed and Mm-wave IC (CoSMIC) Lab.

“Our circulator is the first to be put on a silicon chip, and we get literally orders of magnitude better performance than prior work,” said Krishnaswamy.

“Full-duplex communications, where the transmitter and the receiver operate at the same time and at the same frequency, has become a critical research area and now we have shown that Wi-Fi capacity can be doubled on a nanoscale silicon chip with a single antenna. This has enormous implications for devices like smartphones and tablets,” he said.



“We wanted to create a simple and efficient way, using conventional materials, to break Lorentz Reciprocity and build a low-cost nanoscale circulator that would fit on a chip,” said PhD student Negar Reiskarimian, who developed the circulator.



Krishnaswamy and his team were able to design a highly miniaturised circulator that uses switches to rotate the signal across a set of capacitors to emulate the non-reciprocal “twist” of the signal that is seen in ferrite materials.


The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.