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Radar/Wireless Transmitter on a Chip

Posted by michael on from the all-in-one dept.

dganapa writes "Researchers at the California Institute of Technology, headed by Dr. Ali Hajimiri, have developed a low-cost radar system on a silicon chip. The entire system has been designed from the ground up on silicon, thus leading to reduced cost as well as robustness in response to design variations and changes in environment. The chip runs at a staggering speed of24 GHz (enabling it to transfer data as fast as the main network of the Internet) and can soon lift wireless, high-frequency communication to a whole new level. The radar as such is not as powerful as a conventional radar but because of its cost-effectiveness, a number of them can be coupled together to perform really well. A related NY Times article is here. A recent article from Slashdot shows that radar technology is increasingly being implemented in the automobile industry. This current chip is sure to be much more successful than its predecessors as far as the automobile industry is concerned, but whether or not its processing speed will become important in the computer industry remains to be seen."

4 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Collision aviodance on cars at last by MrRTFM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (yes - of course we can disable it if we want to)
    but wouldn't it be great to have the brakes applied if you lose attention for that one split second. Everyone I've known who has been in a car accident, (luckily they were minor) has said just that.

    Unless you are James Bond, or just want to do some fancy driving a radar controlled braking system would be great.

    --
    You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
  2. 24Ghz link/chip or core speed? by tota · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The arcticle is a little light on technical details, is 24Ghz the speed of the chip or the frequency used to scan/send the data?


    Why can't I get my liquid nitrogen cooled 24 Ghz ahtlon64 then? I thought we weren't capable of making gates that would switch that fast?


    Can someone clear up my confusion?

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    1. Re:24Ghz link/chip or core speed? by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      24GHz is the frequency of the radar signal, which determines the radar's spatial resulution. It's not the data rate, that's an inapt analogy. BTW it's unlikely an automatic braking system will be easy to design-- The rate of false positives is likely to be much too high. Small objects that are near a half-wavelength in size are likely to give strong reflections. So common road objects like pebbles, lane dots, falling rain, are likely to generate an exceedingly high screech-the-brakes rate.

  3. Resolution by Mr.+Underhill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If my early morning math is right the wave length of 24Ghz is about half an inch. Does that mean that the chip could distinguish distances as small as half an inch?

    That would be really cool for a small robot if it could.