Optical wireless may no longer have any obstacles. A study by the Politecnico di Milano, conducted together with the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, the University of Glasgow and Stanford University, and published in the prestigious journal Nature Photonics, has made it possible to create photonic chips that mathematically calculate the optimal shape of light to best traverse any environment, even one that is unknown or changing over time. The problem is well known: light is sensitive to any form of obstacle, even very small ones. Think, for example, of how we see objects when looking through frosted glass or simply wearing fogged glasses. The effect is quite similar on a beam of light carrying data streams in optical wireless systems: the information, while still present, is completely distorted and extremely difficult to retrieve. The devices developed in this research are small silicon chips that work like smart transceivers: cooperating in pairs, they can automatically and autonomously "calculate" what shape a beam of light should be in order to traverse a general environment with maximum efficiency. Not only that, they can also generate many overlapping beams at the same time, each with its own shape, and direct them without them interfering with each other; in this way it is possible to greatly increase transmission capacity, just as required by next-generation wireless systems.
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