There isn’t much worse than a slow, buffering Wi-Fi connection, but all that could end thanks to the development of terahertz wireless networks.

A group of researchers has just reported a breakthrough in communications technology that could open up more research on wireless networks capable of providing connectivity at 100x the speed of what we’ve got today.

Hailing from Brown University, the researchers have cracked a way to create multiplex terahertz waves – making it possible for separate streams of data to be sent through the waves – for the first time.

The process is crucial to developing a communications system that is capable of replacing microwaves in our mobile and Wi-Fi networks, which are increasingly having to handle more data.

Daniel Mittleman, one of the Brown University researchers who worked on the project, said that his team is building a prototype terahertz network to further experiment with the tech.

“Any terahertz communications application is going to need some form of multiplexing and demultiplexing,” Mittleman said.

“This is, to our knowledge, the first time anyone has demonstrated a viable strategy for multiplexing in the terahertz range.”

Although any terahertz communications network that is developed is still a long way from being a reality, the system has great potential.

The waves come between infrared and microwave radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum, which we have already utilised for short and long-range signals. Terahertz waves have a higher frequency than other types of radiation, which gives them the potential for greater bandwidth.

As such, a number of researchers are looking at the problems surrounding the waves. In 2013, Georgia Tech researchers made plans for a wireless antenna made of graphene.

At the time Ian Akyildiz, the head of the lab the proposal came from, said that the antenna would be able to handle data transfers of up to a terabit-per-second. He said that over short ranges it would be possible to “do everything in one second”.

In the new research, reported in Nature Photonics, the Brown University scientists created their device from two metal plates that were placed in parallel to form a guide for the waves. A small slit in one of the plates lets some of the radiation leak out in different directions, and a receiver could be tuned to detect the radiation at a specific angle.

“If you put in 10 different frequencies between the plates – each of them potentially carrying a unique data stream – they’ll come out at 10 different angles,” Mittleman said.

By adjusting the distance between the plates, the researcher claim it would be possible to adjust the spectrum bandwidth that is given to each channel.