Slashdot Mirror


Spark Gaps and Ultra Wide Band Data Transmission

Embedded Geek writes: "It sounds like the revenge of Marconi, but Scientific American has a story about the use of spark gap technology for Ultra Wide Band (UWB) data transmission to send data at 100 to 500 Mbps across short distances (five to ten meters). As with every new technology, 'engineers expect these UWB units to be cheaper, smaller and less power-hungry than today's narrowband radio devices,' but there might be some truth to the hype. The secret appears to be the lack of a carrier wave, allowing use of wide swaths of the spectrum for transmission (the few comments I read at the FCC site referenced in the article addressed spectrum allocation)." Read below for a few more links, too.

"The article pitches the technology as a challenger or succesor to Bluetooth and 802.11a. There are several commercial companies investigating the technology (Aetherwire, Multispectral, and others are cited in the article) and Intel has a paper cited in the article. Spin off applications from the components needed to make this technology work might include a GPS style system accurate to one meter and a radar technology that would allow seeing through walls for construction, rescue, and (ahem) law enforcement."

5 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Not a Panacea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is not a panacea. While using a wider bandwidth does allow for the use of less power, Shannon's theorem still holds so there is a limit to how much the power can be reduced. And yes, with UWB, just like with spread spectrum, other signals contribute to the "noise" so as more people use it the overall performance will degrade. The proponents of this technology often "overlook" these facts when pushing it.

  2. Think of it as Bluetooth on Crack by JohnDenver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    100-500 Mbits/sec can pretty much serve as a wireless bus for most of your components. With that kind of speed, you could physically seperate your (CPU+Memory) (Harddrive) (Monitor)

    Not to mention all of the wireless possibilities linking to Home Entertainment system, Car, Access Control Devices, Etc.

    Given Intel's goals to make UWB cheap as they're trying to fabricate it on CMOS it would be everywhere where wires used to be.

    --
    "Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
  3. MY ERROR 1/3000 of a cell phone Hair Dryer by JohnDenver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1/3000 of a cell phone.

    Ultrawideband communications systems would share the same problem except that they deliberately operate at power levels so low that they emit less average radio energy than hair dryers, electric drills, laptop computers and other common appliances that radiate electromagnetic energy as a by-product. This low-power output means that UWB's range is sharply restricted--to distances of 100 meters or less and usually as little as 10 meters. For well-chosen modulation schemes, interference from UWB transmitters is generally benign because the energy levels of the pulses are simply too low to cause problems.

    A typical 200-microwatt UWB transmitter, for example, radiates only one three-thousandth of the average energy emitted by a conventional 600-milliwatt cell phone.

    --
    "Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
  4. Re:Let me be the first.. by Tekgno · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Jesus fscking Christ, some people just need to be shot in the head. Tesla WAS a genius, the fact was that he got screwed over too many times. If he had more business sense, his accumulated wealth would make Gates look poor. Westinghouse had a deal going with him for $1 per hp generated by his electric motors, westinghouse started to go poor so Tesla ripped up the contract.
    Tesla wanted to transmit power and allow people free use of it but his financer (J.P.Morgan) realised that he wouldn't be able to make a profit off of it so he canned the funding (part of the reason was that Tesla had previously told him that he wanted the money to build a global communications network but was building a facility to transmit power instead).

    Every day your life is affected in some way by Tesla-tech. AC in all its forms for starters and then even the ignition coil in your car is Tesla-tech, as is the flyback transformer in your TV/CRT.

    Then there was his research on 'scalar' waves, these were standing EM waves. I thought this was fantasy, but I did some calculations the other night and they work:
    Start with four sine waves of different frequency, a,b,c and d
    Multiply a and b and c and d
    Then add the two resultant waves:
    (a * b) + (c * d)
    Now plot them, but have the four waves changeing as if you are watching a window of the transmission, have a few cycle of each on screen and change phi so they move.
    The moving vector waves, when computed together to form the scalar wave will have an interesting effect. A scalar wave will be created that has nodal points in free space and have a varying amplitude. It is a bit ricky to explain without images but you have enough info to do that yourself.
    Some of the claims regarding scalar waves have yet to be proven to me, I still have some experimentation to do (I do B of C, no CS at this uni. campus so all in free time) to justify these facts to myself, but it is claimed that scalar waves can propagate FTL and it is possible to modulate the speed. Also when two scalar waves are combined, they recreate a vector wave, I proved this to myself last night. The theory goes that if you can send out two scalar wave at different speeds and with a suitable time separation, you can cause them to re-create a vector wave at a certain point and somehow be able to receive that vector wave at full power (fan-fscking-tastic for wireless networking). This can also be used to generate EMPs at a distance, create force-fields (Tesla shield) or create fantastic explosions (Tesla's death ray). Tesla claimed to have caused the Tunguska explosion with early experimentation on this.
    For more info on scalars do a Google on Tom Bearden.

    Just my $0.0106 (Aussie dollar picking up!)

  5. Re:silly question by man_ls · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IIRC, Matrox has released a wireless monitor.

    No, this is no joke. It's a wireless monitor...don't know the frequencies, but it is limited to 800x600 resolution 16-bit color because anything more than that and there isn't enough bandwidth.

    I don't know what technology its using though, but the limited range and large resolution mean it probably isn't this.