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DIY Synthetic Aperture Radar
An anonymous reader lets us know about a DIY synthetic aperture radar built for $240 in parts (give or take). Here's PDF slideware from the Ph.D. student's research. "Using a discarded garage door opener, an old cordless drill, and a collection of surplus microwave parts, a high resolution X-band linear rail synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging system was developed for approximately $240 material cost. Entry into the field of radar cross section measurements or SAR algorithm development is often difficult due to the cost of high-end precision pulsed IF or other precision radar test instruments."
I'm part of a team who did something similar (We're presenting it at IEEE MWSCAS, it's much less cool than this, though). We built several thousands of dollars worth of test equipment using cheap junk and came out with stuff that was just as good. DIY folks have been doing this for decades, of course, but PhD students are now starting to publish these things. This is a big deal, and means that legitimate researchers can pick up this work and very easily enter a field of research their institutions may have previously been unable to fund. Our school has always just enlisted students to design and build all of our test equipment, but still. This is good.
I didn't RTFA, but I certainly hope they've open-sourced their backend interface software and hardware designs as well. Of course, if you're disassembling a microwave, you can hardly patent the technology. Closing off access to your work kind of defeats the purpose in science, though.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Seriously, he isn't a troll. You opened your yap to dis some guys work, and you were requested to provide a reason why you feel qualified to so. So put up or shut up and be known as a weasel.
This could fall into the hands of terrorists.
Anything could fall into the hands of terrorists. This sort of statement is paranoia at its best.
I would think most of the great Ph.D.'s would be DIY, else what's the point? Your thesis is supposed to be original research, and serious research at that, so I don't see how coming up with a way of building extremely expensive technology at a tiny fraction of the cost in your garage is anything but exactly what a Ph.D. thesis is all about.
It's not a book report or high school research paper, you know.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
That's a reasonable response. I think you would find many PH.D.'s - at least in the sciences, I won't venture to comment on the arts or fine arts - are entirely theoretical which I hope you would agree are not DIY - at least not DIY in the colloquial sense as I understand it. On your assertion that there is no point if it isn't DIY let me say that if it had been a thesis E=MC**2 would not be DIY, but I hope you agree there would be a point to it.
That would depend entirely on why it is inexpensive compared to the traditional alternative - which is one reason why I made my comment relate to the accuracy of the article summary. I agree the Ph.D. is supposed to be serious and original research. It is also supposed to contribute to our intellectual understanding of things in a significant way. Suppose there was a problem domain in which the best solution was so slow that the problem was, for all practical purposes, not solvable. Now someone comes up with a solution that makes getting an answer so fast that it becomes practical for many applications. That might be worth a Ph.D. and in part that would depend on how that new solution contributed to our deeper understanding of the original problem or some other problem of intellectual significance.
Is coming up with a better approximation algorithm for travelling salesman of the same intellectual calibre as developing a proof for PNP?
I would say no, and that the former would be a good Master's while the latter would obviously be a Ph.D. However the former could be a good Ph.D. if it also shed some light on the P, NP question or if it approximated the solution in a way fundamentally different than other approximations to the problem.
One thing I might look at in the research that this article concerns is whether it was of the "we found a completely different way to do this and demonstrated it using cheap components, and this new method can be developed into a commercial product equalling current commercial products but at a fraction of the cost" type or was it "we built something essentially the same as existing systems, or different only in minor ways, but we used cheap components to achieve the same end" (or even "and resources that are actually quite valuable but happened to be cheap/free to us because of our unique circumstances"). And does it advance our understanding of synthetic aperture radar in a fundamental and significant way? But IMHO only making something financially cheaper isn't in and of itself worth a Ph.D. Of course YMMV.
As the the Anonymous Cowards foaming at the mouth about "dissing" someone's work or demanding proof that I have done better or... clearly they have no understanding of the intellectual discourse expected in the Academy or of what entitles someone to critique something or to hold a dissenting opinion. I could be unkind but I'll refrain.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop