That's more protocol than anything. The IR used day-to-day was designed for consumer products in the 70s and 80s, so by necessity was a very simple protocol. There's no physical limitation for higher bandwidth IR.
IR has a frequency of between 430THz and 300GHz, so Max bandwidth would be between 215Tsymbols and 150Gsymbols (I used symbols instead of bits because I forgot the right term...)
So there is an information-theory limit, as I understand it. If I was ever wrong, this is the right crowd to find the person who will correct me!
IR comma doesn't the frequwncy of the light as a carrier, it uses pulsed IR (on=1 off=0 usually in the KHz range) the limitation is usually the rise time of the LEDs
Thank you! Can't believe I couldn't remember that word, although I never really understood why you can put as many bits in each symbol as you like - it seems like that would just mean stuff an infinite number of bits into each one? (Obviously silly, but then why is it defined that way?) - Great, now I have to read about that this morning. :)
Yeah, there is the Shannon Limit which gives the theoretical max, I was more trying to get at there not being a reason why we'd be stuck at remote control/irda speeds.
