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Wireless-Friendly Microwaves

Posted by michael on from the press-enter dept.

Makarand writes "According to this article on ABC News, scientists at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have stumbled upon a simple and elegant solution to keep your kitchen microwave from becoming a noisy nuisance to your home Wi-Fi network. They found that they could focus the microwaves into a single frequency and reduce noisy microwave emissions by placing ordinary magnets in specific patterns along the magnetron . New techniques to reduce microwave interference will be needed when Wi-Fi enabled entertainment systems will allow digital audio and video to be transmitted to different rooms of a house wirelessly. Packet drops in such a sytem would degrade the video and audio experience."

5 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. pdf here by maharg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Low-noise microwave magnetrons by azimuthally verying axial magnetic field - here

    --

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    @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
  2. Re:Yay! First comment! by lseltzer · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have big problems with the radio that the CIA implanted in my brain.

  3. Even better ... by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

    They found that they could focus the microwaves into a single frequency

    Why not go all the way and make the frequency and phase of the microwave oven's magnetron adjustable, add some kind of microcontroller to drive it, and a small cpu to implement the 802.11b stack. Then, from your laptop, run this script:


    WIFI_IF=eth0
    DATE=`date +%s`
    while [ ! $TIMEOUT ];do
    DATE_PREV=$DATE
    tcpdump -i $WIFI_IF -c 1
    DATE=`date +%s`
    let TDIFF=DATE-DATE_PREV
    if [ $TDIFF -gt 5 ];then
    TIMEOUT=1
    fi
    done
    echo "Coffee is hot!"

    Ah, the marvels of technology ...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  4. Re:what about the millions of legacy microwaves? by hool5400 · · Score: 5, Funny

    legacy microwaves

    Now there's a phrase you'd only hear on slashdot.

    --

    Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
  5. Re:Or.... by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Informative

    When you hit water with it, it will agitate the molecules and things get hot and cooked

    You seem agitated and cooked enough without microwaves.

    The difference is in power and concentration : a microwave oven is minimum 700W, concentrated on a lump of water, whereas an 802.11b is 100mW radiated in all directions. You'd need hundreds of wifi cards doing denial-of-services around a cage to even start incommodating the hamster inside.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash