Researchers from China's Xiamen University working with the 92150 unit of the People's Liberation Army used Huawei's "polar code" data encoding and an underwater microphone (hydrophone) to confirm a new world record underwater wireless transmission range of 30 kilometers, or 18.6 miles, reports the South China Morning Post.
As the source points out, this eclipses the JANUS protocol used by NATO, which has a maximum range of 28 kilometers, or 17.4 miles. It also beats China's previous best record of 14 kilometers, or 8.7 miles. The major downside in play is that this data stream still only operates at 4,000 bits per second (or 4 kilobits per second — not even larger kilobytes), but the stability of the signal and the integrity of the data is what matters most in this use case.
