DARPA Project to Examine Terahertz for Wireless Communications
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in collaboration with the New York University Tandon School of Engineering; the Universities of California at Santa Barbara, Berkeley, and San Diego; Cornell University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as several industrial partners, has launched a hub for advanced wireless and sensing research. Researchers at the ComSenTer hub are developing technologies to take advantage of the high gigahertz and terahertz spectrum for imaging and sensing applications. NYU researcher Sundeep Rangan notes the results of initial millimeter-wave field trials suggest such transmissions provide people with more coverage than had been anticipated.
New Device Could Increase Battery Life of Electronic Devices by More Than a Hundred-Fold
Battery-operated electronics users often complain that battery life is too short and the devices generate too much heat, and researchers at the University of Missouri (MU) have developed a material that could solve both problems. Led by MU’s Deepak K. Singh, the team developed a two-dimensional, nanostructured material by depositing a magnetic permalloy on the honeycomb structure template of a silicon substrate. The new material conducts unidirectional current, and when built into a diode, dissipates significantly less power compared to a conventional semiconducting diode. The new magnetic diode could be used to create new magnetic transistors and amplifiers that dissipate very little power, thus boosting the efficiency of the power source in electronic devices.
Making Radio Chips for Hell
Researchers at the University of Arkansas and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have developed a wireless radio mixer integrated circuit, known as a mixer IC, which can operate at temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius. The mixer IC was designed by KTH’s Ana Rusu, packaged by Arkansas researcher Alan Mantooth’s group, and then tested by Rusu’s group. The new device translates a 59-megahertz radio frequency signal to a 500-kilohertz signal to enable signal processing. The researchers are also developing sensors for the interior of diesel engine combustion chambers so computers can better control engine efficiency, as well as developing power electronics for actuating a drill bit at the bottom of an oil well, where temperatures can reach 150 degrees Celsius.
Walter Underwood (K6WRU) says
My son has two friends who are working on PhDs in chemistry. Both are working on battery technology. That is where the money is.
A friend from my college days worked on semiconductors for down-hole sensing (drilling). I think they used gallium arsenide. That is a brutal environment, with terrible temperatures and vibration. They got data until the devices failed. The results were sent back by modulating the flow of the returning drilling mud. It was a “bits per minute” channel.
Steve W8SFC says
A little more than 100 years ago communication was totally dependent on wire spanning the distance between stations. Now we are developing the ability to communicate at frequencies in the terahertz range and in conditions that are so severe that the devices used to perform the task would have never been able to achieve.
Is man’s ingenuity limitless? Perhaps not but it seems to be going places that only a short time ago would have been impossible. In my lifetime human beings have done the most amazing things through technologies that were at one time locked in the imagination and now we are working to solve problems at a level that has been nothing short of astounding. The world of possibilities is just beginning to become realized.
Thanks Dan, for brining these discoveries to the attention of those who subscribe to your blog.
73!
Dave New, N8SBE says
I read a sci-fi book a while back, where one of the gadgets was a personal assistant, similar to a cellphone in size, but much smarter, tied to a vast satellite-based AI network, and able to respond to you as a personal companion, encyclopedia, and all-around smarty.
It also had no batteries, per se, but scavenged its power from the wireless signals used to keep it connected. I guess it had some energy storage (super caps?), because as the story progressed, the owner was transported to some prior time period where the supporting network (nor any other electronic devices) existed, yet.
The assistant still operated, but at much reduced capacity, and was achingly lonely due to its isolation from all the other assistants that were on the network.
The pathos reached a peak, though, when the assistant and owner realized after several weeks, that the power was nearly depleted and that the assistant was about to experience death, something completely out of its experience. A very touching final scene between owner and assistant, leaving the owner completely alone for the first time in their life.
It was hard to decide who to feel sorry for more, the dying assistant, or the frightened, newly alone, owner.