KDDI Plans to make new IR USB 2.0 Friendly and FAST

Japanese firm, KDDI R&D Laboratories Inc is releasing a supercharged version of IrDA. This USB 2.0 IR technology is able to send data via infrared signal at nearly 1Gbps. This is approximately 30 times the speed of IrDA. Having lost much ground to Bluetooth as the wireless flavor of choice IR is still capable of transmitting data significantly faster than Bluetooth 2.0. This new technology would be a quantum leap forward and could revitalize IR communications applications. This might actually put it on par with Certified Wireless USB

In the past IR has lost out on possible integrations due to proprietary device specifications that couldn't keep up with the USB communications standard. This new chipset has been engineered to specifically adapt to those challenges. The recipient creates a virtual USB extender that keeps the bus happy while data is being transmitted and converted. KDDI hopes that this will enable low power wireless transmission of the large amounts of data that many portable devices are generating. Camcorders, video phones and media players could all benefit from being able to completely drop the wire in favor of wireless transfers. KDDI will be showcasing this at the Wireless Japan conference next week.

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