UC Berkeley and Stanford University have teamed together and made this ant sized radio. The radio has many interesting features. It runs in a higher data rate of 24 GHz for receiving and 60 GHz for transmitting, this allows for a very minimal antenna size. (The antenna is actually printed in the chip you see above.)
Other radios that run at lower data rates need a substantially larger antenna, said Amin Arbabian of Stanford University.
There is a down side to the high data rate, the broadcast strength is only twenty inches.
So your next question is probably "What good is a 20 inch transmission?"...
Well these radios are going to be very very inexpensive to purchase.
So you could buy a multitude of them and then string them along like beads (20 inches apart) and make a very cheap transfer link for transferring data at fast paces.
While this might not be of use to a standard home consumer, these could be very useful to a business.
First off, they don't need a power source to each radio, only the first transmitter. Second of all, instead of running wires that need to be hid along long distances of wall, these could be put in hidden places 20 inches apart, and let you build with fewer walls making a wonderfully open "Frank Lloyd Write-ish" office space.
That is just one of the many uses mentioned in other articles and forums about this unique radio.
You have to admit, this tech is cool, right?
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