Infra-Red transfers are back – KDDI claims IR transfer of entire CD in less than one second

Remember those days of yore when we’d “beam” data between our mobile gadgets via that little dark-red-plastic covered port known as an IR port? It was super-convenient to be able to transfer some contact information on the fly, but it was also super-annoying to have to make sure the ports were lined up correctly – and even then we weren’t assured that the transfer would go smoothly.

So, what’s up with KDDI R&D Laboratories’ reviving the technology from the almost-grave? Well, it seems that they’ve developed an IR (Infra-Red) technology (Warning: Japanese PDF link) that is capable of 1Gbps data transfers – which completely trounces the old theoretical limit of 4Mbps.

Now, besting a theoretical limit by even ten-fold would be an incredible feat, but how did KDDI manage to beat the limit over 250 times? Well, KDDI swapped out the low-performance LED diode for a super-performance semiconductor laser. The laser can blink on and off fast enough to transfer a full CD worth of music in under a second. A good dose of buffer memory is needed to make all this high-speed data transferring go smoothly.

KDDI says this new IR tech could be used in PCs and mobile devices alike, which bodes well for the future of high-speed data transfers to our mobile phone. Imagine transferring your entire music library to your cellphone in mere seconds. Hell, we’d settle for transferring our entire collection to our handset in under a minute. Of course, you’ll still probably have to ensure that the laser-toting IR port is lined up correctly.

[Via: DigitalWorldTokyo]