Gigabit handheld speeds. Now THAT's blazing fast!!

Looks like the folks at IrDA can no longer be accused of being asleep at the wheel for the past few years. At Wireless Japan 2008, one of the members of the Infrared Data Association demonstrated "Giga-IR", a whopping 1 Gbps data transmission on a handheld prototype.


At that speed, peer-to-peer beaming of any sort of files from your handheld phone/camera/pda/mp3/videocamera/etc becomes a reality. Today, the closest technology you can consider is Bluetooth but with its 3Mbps data rate, will severely restrict what file sizes you can beam. Single songs may be OK but longer videos may be tedious. RF technologies typically get harder to design and significantly more expensive as the data rates increase.

KDDI, who developed the "Giga-IR" expects beaming 20-30 songs using this new technology will take only 1-2 seconds. Now, that's impressive! Now applications are no longer limited by speed.

See video below.


IrDA has initiated a working group to complete the standard for "Giga-IR" which is expected to be complete by March 2009. Now, that too, is fast!
I believe the Giga-IR module prices will be significantly lower than their RF counterparts and they will be able to persuade more device companies to implement this new technology.

Well done IrDA & KDDI!