A smart surface for smart devices
We’ve heard it for years: 5G is coming. And yet, while high-speed 5G internet has indeed slowly been rolling out in a smattering of countries across the globe, many barriers remain that have prevented widespread adoption. One issue is that we can’t get faster internet speeds without more efficient ways of delivering wireless signals. The general trend has been to simply add antennas to either the transmitter (i.e., Wi-Fi access points and cell towers) or the receiver (such as a phone or laptop). But that’s grown difficult to do as companies increasingly produce smaller and smaller devices, including a new wave of “internet of things” systems. Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) looked at the problem recently and wondered if people have had things completely backwards this whole time. Rather than focusing on the transmitters and receivers, what if we could amplify the signal by adding antennas to an external surface...