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Radio wave vortex can 'infinitely' boost bandwidth capacity

03-06-2012 • Terrence Aym

With the explosion of wireless devices during the last decade, radio engineers have been increasingly concerned that soon the world will run out of bandwith. Mobile phones and handheld devices like PDAs, Android, and iPads, not to mention notepads, notebooks and even desktop computers, are voraciously eating up available channels across the spectrum of radio frequencies.

As the growth has escalated almost exponentially, engineers have brainstormed to find ways to put off the inevitable: a veritable radio frequency gridlock.

But their task seemed doomed to failure until a team of researchers from Italy and Sweden found a kink in the physics of radio beams that looks like it could expand bandwidth capacity infinitely.