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Gas Plasma Antennas Help Wi-Fi Security
mindless4210 writes "Markland Technologies has developed a new gas plasma antenna technology which could help to secure wireless networks. The technology allows for highly directive and electronically steerable digital data transmission via solid-state semi conductor based plasma generators. A plasma antenna can reposition itself at very high speeds, as well as change it's beamwidth and bandwidth, creating spatial and spectral security features which are not presently available with conventional WiFi antenna technology."
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Hello, high voltage. It's one thing to put "phased array" antennas on naval vessels, but entirely another to put them in a house. Not to mention the voltage difference needed to generate the plasma.
Fluorescent bulbs use this sort of principle, too - surely our new gas-plasma antennas aren't to be made of glass?
Hrm. Perhaps they are.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
According to their site, plasma antennas are interesting for short-pulse applications, such as radar, IFF... Wifi is not mentioned, just a vague "high speed data communications" after a wealth of military applications.
Just because it's not a solid doesn't make it spooky or virtual...
virtual radio telescopes could be of practically unlimited size, by this arrangement.
Not really, since the plasma has to be kept "hot" and at low pressures in order to prevent it from recombining back into "normal" uncharged matter again. A device capable of maintaining such a large plasma would require enormous amounts of power and maintainence.
Spatial security == the beam goes where you want, as opposed to all over the place.
Spectral security == the edges of the beam spectrum are very well defined, with very little "spill" into neighboring frequencies.
Because of the speed with which they can revert to nonplasma state they can prevent ringing and other artifacts inherent to metal antennae, increasing the fidelity and reliability as well as the signal processing logic on the receiving end.
There's also the weight and size issue, with the plasma coming in both lighter and smaller to an equivalent conventional one.
But you're right of course that it will be a while or perhaps never that it will be just as easy or easier to work with plasma. So you might not see one on a $10 walkman, but that's not to say that there aren't a lot of applications where the benefits would afar outweight the difficulty.
are also nothing new. This company's been around for some time doing similar stuff.
This sounds like mostly B.S.
At microwave frequencies (at which Wi-Fi operates), just about every object scatters (reflects, diffracts) incident radiation. As a matter of fact, many RF antenna designs are "parasitically" directional, but rely on backscattering to produce a more omnidirectional response.
Assuming that an adapative antenna array (which seems to be what the original press release describes) can target a specific client, sensitive near neighbors will inevitably be able to eavesdrop. Furthermore, an array of radiating slots or conductive elements with solid-state switches or phase shifters may achieve the same result without the need for using plasma.
As a side note - for those that think gas plasma is something magical, keep in mind that many vacuum fluorescent and early laptop displays used this principle economically and safely, as do a variety of commodity devices like fluorescent and HID lamps.
Thanks for pointing out their other stuff. IMHO it discredits them. The Vapour Trace technology certainly isn't new, and I doubt that Acoustic Core could compete with the scanners that are already out there. As for a keyless cipher, I don't see how you could do cryptography without keys except if it's quantum cryptography or something like that. Security thorough obscurity?
Dangit, I forgot to correct the link in my previous comment, sorry.