Iranian researchers’ chip makes internet faster than ever

Two Iranian researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed a high-frequency electronic chip potentially capable of transmitting tens of gigabits of data per second.

According to phys, two Iranian engineers at the University of California, Davis , have developed a novel, high-frequency electronic chip potentially capable of transmitting tens of gigabits of data per second—a rate that is orders of magnitude above the fastest internet speeds available today.

Omeed Momeni, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis, and doctoral student Hossein Jalili designed the chip using a phased array antenna system, which funnels the energy from multiple sources into a single beam.

According to Momeni, creating phased arrays at higher frequencies is a difficult task; "we are the first to achieve this much bandwidth at this frequency,” he added.

The chip designed by Momeni and Jalili successfully operates at 370 GHz with 52 GHz of bandwidth.

The tiny piece of hardware designed by Momeni and Jalili’s prototype is an important step toward the development of scalable systems that can be used to sharpen technologies like spectroscopy, sensing, radar, medical imaging and high-speed communication.

The research was supported by a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER grant awarded to Momeni. The chip and related research were presented at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference earlier this year.