Magnets To Replace Bluetooth?

aceat64 writes "News.com is carrying a story that suggests magnets could eventually replace Bluetooth as a cheaper and more energy effiect wireless solution. The concept of magnetic induction isn't new, but Aura has managed to shrink the technology onto a single chip. The first device to be made using the technology is a wireless headset that will cost between $60 and $80."

Comments

Replace bluetooth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about lack of ambition.

YES!

[DrEldarion]

This is JUST what we need! A bunch of wild magnetic fields around our electrical equipment! I can't wait to get an adapter for my computer, there's space in the case right next to my hard drive...

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Induction

[polyp2000]

Correct me if i'm wrong but dont most Radio transmission technologies use some form of magnetic induction in order to achieve their goal. Last i heard passing electricity through a coil produces a magnetic field. Whats new here?

Re:Induction

[azaris]

Correct me if i'm wrong but dont most Radio transmission technologies use some form of magnetic induction in order to achieve their goal.

The point is using magnetic fields and mutual inductance rather than electromagnetic radiation to transfer information wirelessly.

Last i heard passing electricity through a coil produces a magnetic field.

More precisely, passing an alternating current through any conductor will produce a magnetic field. This magnetic field in turn will create a current in another conductor some distance away (the article sites four feet as the maximum distance) which can be used to observer the original signal.

It's an old concept, but since magnetic fields created by normal AC powers are pretty weak it's not really that useful. Apparently they've managed a very-high frequency (the effect is proportional to the change in current) alternating current in a chip small enough to make this possible.

Does anyone think about the environment?

[spektr]

Expect carrier pigeons crashing into your cell phone.

Hrmm

[acehole]

Magnets... the geek's natural enemy, even more so than fresh air and natural light.

Bad news....

[moehoward]

Bad news for Iron Man.

What's the attraction?

[dcw3]

I'm positively repelled by this, flux you very much.

AT least it'll keep the loonies happy

[rde]

So the hapless doofi who've spent years thinking a) magnets can heal them and b) phones can give them cancer must be delighted with this new headset; it'll fix those brain tumours right up.

D'you think it's coincidence that the company who came up with this is called Aura?

Eh?

[BJH]

How can you replace a technology that nobody actually *uses*?

Child Labour?

[nih]

'At the heart of the new interest in what's known as "magnetic induction" is Aura, or so claims the nine-year-old chipmaker'

quick, somebody stop these fiends!

Faraday

[penguin7of9]

Developed in the late 1950s, magnetic induction never really caught on

Gee, silly me, and I always thought Faraday developed "magnetic induction" and that it was in wide use. But, hey, it has turned out that, contrary to my own silly ideas, Gates actually invented the Internet and that BT invented the hyperlink, so I must be wrong on Faraday as well.

Hmm...

[DoorFrame]

I installed one at my home yesterday, and today my hard drive isn't working and my monitor's got all sorts of funny colors on it. I'm posting this from work... I think I'll install one here to trouble shoot.

Just a se

Magnets

[ScrewMaster]

A broadcast antenna is a magnet, an electromagnet, one that changes polarity many times per second, and that varying electromagnetic field is what induces a response in the receiving antenna. This is called radio transmission (see Marconi, or better yet look up Heinrich Hertz or James Clerk Maxwell.) If this so-called technology is claiming to transmit information using a static magnetic field they are full of little red ants. Phooey.

Re:Magnets

[TeknoHog]

This technology does use changing magnetic fields, but it is still different from EM radiation.

There are different kinds of modes for electric and magnetic fields to work with. EM radiation is just one of them, but it is special in the way that it can cross arbitrary distances if properly focused. This works because a sinusoidally changing electric field generates similarly changing magnetic fields, which in turn generate similarly changing electric fields. In a way, the fields themselves are not traveling, but they build up new fields in succession, hence propagating the signal.

In every practical antenna, other modes of electric/magnetic fields are present besides the radiation component. However, the other modes disappear faster than the radiation, as they do not rebuild themselves. The inductive method relies on these other modes, using very different kinds of antenna which don't produce much of the radiation component.

Aura's Explanation of this Tech...

[Flave]

Like many here, I was very skeptical when I read this article -- the reporter is clearly a total sci/tech ignoramus (you gotta love the totally redundant "cordless cell phone").

So I went to Aura's website for more info. Here's their blurb:

While the concepts behind magnetic induction communication have been around for decades, Aura's engineers are the first to develop and implement practical solutions capturing the benefits of this technology.

Conventional radio frequency (RF) wireless communication systems are optimal for sending large amounts of information and communicating over long distances. However, this consumes power, creates information security issues, and results in interference and "crowding" among devices. A good example is in the 2.4 GHz band where simultaneous operation of a cordless phone, WiFi network and Bluetooth headset is frequently not possible without severe degradation of Quality of Service. In sharp contrast, LibertyLink's magnetic communication operates in a "bubble" that envelops the personal space of each user and is - by the laws of physics - inherently private and secure. The result is an easier to use, lower-cost system that makes far more efficient use of power and bandwidth than conventional RF solutions. By selecting a technology that limits the range and bandwidth to only what the application requires, Aura achieves a very substantial savings in power with all of the simplicity advantages of LibertyLink: dedicated communication channels, no bandwidth sharing, complete frequency re-use between bubbles, worldwide regulatory flexibility, and reliable coexistence with WiFi, CDMA, TDMA. and GSM transmissions.

Still pretty vague -- how the hell do they handle interference issues in this "magnetic bubble"? Do they supply Faraday cages for your PC/monitor?

Re:Total hogwash...

[astroboscope]

Magnetic fields also create waves, but the waves form a kind of bubble, which stops growing after four feet, making them more secure than waves wafting endlessly in every direction, Cui said.

It's vague, but I think this means it it using the "near field" instead of the propagating field. A transmitting antenna emits two fields: a propagating electromagnetic wave (i.e. light) whose intensity drops off like 1/r^2, and a nonpropagating electromagnetic field that drops off like 1/r^4 (which is why it's called the near field). It can carry a lot of power, but since it doesn't go anywhere it is usually ignored.

Good GOD, man!

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope you're just trying to be funny and doing a poor job of it, but in case you're serious...

I keep waiting for a gas pump that "recognizes" my gasoline credit card device and waits for me to "fill it up."

Uh, hate to break it to you, but those have been around since the mid to late 90's, when Mobil introduced the SpeedPass. I've had one since long before I ever heard of Bluetooth. Now they are used at Exxon and Mobil stations all over the place. I think McDonald's even did testing a while back in California, IIRC, where people could pay for their drive-thru purchases via SpeedPass-- dunno if that's going to go national. When they launched it, it came in two varieties-- a small cylinder for your keyring that must be waved in front of a spot on the pump, and a transponder meant to be stuck inside your car's window that is "read" by an overhanging antenna when the car first pulls up to the pump (sort of like the E-Z Pass system some states have for toll roads). I think the stick-on transponder SpeedPass has been phased out, because I see no reference to it on the website.

Have a hard time getting a paper receipt, though. Keep getting a message saying "Your receipt is inside."

Where I live, gas pumps have been accepting credit cards right at the pump for at least 10 years, and have been printing their own receipts right at the pump as well. My SpeedPass account is even configured to assume I want a receipt when I gas up, so the pump just spits one out without asking when I'm done filling my tank.

I won't even tell you what I can do with my Macs running OS X and my Bluetooth phone, it may make your head explode. No flying cars yet, though.

I suggest you move to a state where people aren't too busy dating their relatives to embrace technological advances. By the way, the North won.

Re:Answers.

[pseudonymouse]

1 - They complement each other, yes, and they are intimately interrelated.. but they are not the same thing (for practical purposes). If you have a bar magnet in front of you, is their an electric field around it? no, there isn't.

There is no electrical field associated with a static magnetic field. Any change of position or intensity of the magnetic field will result in an electrical field and an electromagnetic wave (wavelength dependent upon rate of change). Any transmission of information implies changing the field in some way.

2 - A cruise of the whitepapers indicates that the magnetic field strength is related to distance via 1/d^6, as opposed to radiated power, where it's relatd to 1/d^2. This means a much sharper dropoff in power... meaning the point beyond which there is a negligible power level is much sharper.

1/d^6 is sharp drop, and I'm wondering what they're doing. 'Magnets' doesn't explain it. A magnet does inherently have a dipole field (which has a sharper dropoff than inverse-square drop of a monopole field), but 1/d^6 sounds like a higher order field than that, which is interesting. I assume from the article that they've been using magnetic inductors rather than electrical conductors to construct and detect this particular electromagnetic field, which is also interesting.