The home internet is amazing, connecting people all over the world to endless information from the comfort of their couch. That is, when it works. If you live in an area with poor connectivity, a bad provider, or simply thick walls, your ISP or Wi-Fi alone could be the problem. (opens in new tab).
For many people, solving an in-home Wi-Fi solution can be expensive and require a lot of trial and error. There are so many things that can interfere with your signal that it can be difficult to pinpoint a single cause.
This is one of the reasons why there are many different types of routers and other products that help connect people at home. Wi-Fi range extender (opens in new tab) It is becoming more and more popular, even in small apartments, as problems can arise where the device connects fine in one room but not in another.
Another solution is to deal with some interference instead of boosting your Wi-Fi signal. However, if that interference is permanent, like a wall, that can be a problem. The good news is that officials from the Technical University of Vienna and the University of Rennes have found an interesting solution.
Paper published on Nature.com (opens in new tab) (It’s been found Newsweek (opens in new tab)) shows the work of scientists who designed anti-reflective Wi-Fi solutions. It works by using a computation to set up a series of obstacles for the signal, so that the signal passes through the surface rather than being immediately reflected.
So far, it sounds like a bit of a pie, but the team has proven success with computed models, and has also been successful in experiments. There is a possibility.
“First, we need to send specific waves through a medium and accurately measure how these waves are reflected by the material,” says co-author Michael Holodinski. “With this information, we can calculate the corresponding compensation medium for any medium that scatters waves in a complex way, so we were able to show that the combination of both media allows the wave to pass perfectly. The key to this is a mathematical method that can be used to calculate the exact shape of this antireflection coating,” Horodynski said.
I’m not saying you should ditch your fancy mesh Wi-Fi system (opens in new tab) Or there are still a lot of extenders out there, but I’m looking forward to not needing them in the future.
