Turning Your Home Wiring Into a Giant Antenna

An anonymous reader writes with this IBT snippet: "Imagine if you could run a wireless sensor device for years without ever having to replace the battery. Turns out, the idea of a battery-less wireless device might not be too far off. Researchers at the University of Washington and the Georgia Institute of Technology developed a small node sized device that uses the residential wiring from a building or home and transmits information to and from almost anywhere else from within. The device is called Sensor Nodes Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure, or SNUPI. It uses basic copper wiring as a giant antenna to receive wireless signals at a set frequency. When the device is within 10 to 15 feet of electrical wiring, it uses the antenna to send data to a single base station." (For "node-sized," think "size of a breakfast cereal prize.")

Comments

Oh the Hams are going to love this....NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

These powerline 'type' technologies are like just bad bad news for Hams and shortwave enthusiasts as it wipes out the bands, unless notch filters are employed, which I doubt it.

Units

[Locke2005]

For "node-sized," think "size of a breakfast cereal prize."?

For those of us that haven't eaten cereal that comes with prizes for at least 40 years now, can you express that in more traditional units, e.g. volkswagens, libraries of congress, or common US coins? Alternatively, you you just give the fucking dimensions.