Wireless radios are limited by one seemingly simple problem: they can’t send signals and receive signals at the same time. It’s because when sending, it’s like you’re blasting Slayer while yodeling and somebody’s trying to whisper something at you from a mile away: the signal just can’t get through your death-metal-yodelay-he-hoo.
Some grad students at Stanford, no doubt sick of their wireless network taking forever, decided to tackle this problem by making the radios more like a human brain. We can talk and listen at the same time because our brains filter out the noise of our blabbing and allow us to pay attention to the other person. The result is basically like noise-cancelling headphones, except with Wi-Fi.
The implications of this are pretty astounding; this officially doubles the speed of any network, just as an example. Here’s the demo, in all it’s glory.
[ via the wardrivers at Futurity ]