IrDA above 115kbps is basically dead, and I don't think anything beyond 4MBps is feasible (ie: months spent on an FPGA to handle all the issues)
I'm a big fan of using simplified IrDA in 2023 in hobby electronics. But I don't see a smooth path to 9.6Gbps.
1Mbps to 10Mbps is already exhausting for me to think about.
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Is there any industry chip with planned development to handle this standard? Finding a damn LED and Photodiode that is guaranteed faster than 20ns to feasibly handle 4Mbit is horrifying. Let alone the signal processing circuits (I think you need 20Mhz OpAmps which isn't a 6001 or lm358 if you know what I mean) or FPGAs needed to handle this relatively low speeds.
Or are we doing some kind of multi-frequency multi LED thing? Are there any LEDs or Photodiode that can emit and detect such a narrow band? What are the sources of IR noise to mess with those frequencies?
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Oh, but 115kHz is plenty useful for a hobbyist and I highly recommend people playing with that.
There are much faster IR Links for industrial application. They are for example used in automatic crane application. I don't know the data rate just now, but we have a crane with a such Profibus link since over 20 years in our factory.
Well... I think I can visualize a 100 Mbit IR link in theory.
If we use Wi-fi like processing (256-QAM and the like), we'll only need 12.5 Mhz-class LEDs and photodiodes to communicate at 100 Mbit. (assuming 8-bits per 80 nanosecond or whatever). I'm pretty sure that cheap LEDs with 50 nanoseconds aka 20MHz speeds, as well as analog components with high-gains at 20MHz (I dunno, a 1GHz bandwidth-gain, giving x50 gain at 20MHz) are all possible.
I think the article's claims of 9.6 Gbit are so absurd however, that I'm having a great amount of difficulty seeing how it gets there.
I admit that I wasn't aware of the automation IR links that you posted. I'm impressed that IR has gotten that good today, but its not so good that its become unbelievable. The 9.6 Gbit headline on this article however is just absurd at face value. I really need to see a physical demo before I'll believe something like that.
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I know that IrDA is a 90s standard made for far slower LEDs and components. But its a good baseline for thinking about the issues that occur in the space of light-based communications.
I'm sure once the demand is there, the silicon will be mass produced.
I like 38khz modulated IR more than 115kbps, you can get really good range at low cost and power, without high parts count, and if you have large amounts of data rather than just stuff that takes advantage of directionality, you can do it over Bluetooth for cheap.
Never got a chance to play with 115kbps though, seems like it could be pretty cool, but I'm not sure what I'd do with it.
Edit: I re-read your comment and I think I see what you might have meant now. I think you were asking if there would be a solution for low speed devices to use this standard.
I'm asking if the LEDs that support 9.6Gbps (what is that? A 1ns or faster LED?) even exist in any substantial way.
Isn't that like, laser speeds? Not overhead LED speeds. And over the air? Not inside a fiber line?
This is basically a 10Gbps standard for fiber lines except over the air. All those issues need to be solved without the guarantees or isolation that fiber optic lines provide.
That's just transmit. Receive has to deal with the same issues, amplifiers and other electronics that move at the requested speeds.
I don't know, I was pointing out for the data rate that seems to be part of some COTS devices, not the data rate that you can negotiate with research lab hardware.
Single quantum well LEDs are well-commercialized at 150 Mbps for MOST150 (that was intended to, running over POF, be cheaper than an ethernet PHY and copper); I'm not sure exactly where SQW LEDs drop off and laser diodes become the only option, but it's substantially faster than traditional LEDs.
Could one PWM such a light to display high bit color content? By my estimates: to send 9.6Gbps, you need (at least) 9.6 GHz, and that's 160,000,000x faster than 60hz. log2(160 million) = 27.3 bits.
I'm sure that this idea is more of a fun hackaday-style gimmick (i.e. not productionizable for various reasons), but would be fun to see.
I'm a big fan of using simplified IrDA in 2023 in hobby electronics. But I don't see a smooth path to 9.6Gbps.
1Mbps to 10Mbps is already exhausting for me to think about.
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Is there any industry chip with planned development to handle this standard? Finding a damn LED and Photodiode that is guaranteed faster than 20ns to feasibly handle 4Mbit is horrifying. Let alone the signal processing circuits (I think you need 20Mhz OpAmps which isn't a 6001 or lm358 if you know what I mean) or FPGAs needed to handle this relatively low speeds.
Or are we doing some kind of multi-frequency multi LED thing? Are there any LEDs or Photodiode that can emit and detect such a narrow band? What are the sources of IR noise to mess with those frequencies?
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Oh, but 115kHz is plenty useful for a hobbyist and I highly recommend people playing with that.