Cambridge Consultants is working to deliver the largest airborne communications antenna available commercially.The technology consultancy and product development firm, which part of Capgemini, has built a functioning, scaled-down version of a wireless antenna designed to beam connectivity from the sky. The prototype, announced this month, is part of a four-year project with UK-based start-up Stratospheric Platforms Limited (SPL).SPL is developing a High-Altitude Platform (HAP) and communication system that's designed to deliver affordable, fast connectivity. The HAP aircraft system, as envisaged, would beam its Internet from the stratosphere, which is the second major layer of Earth's atmosphere. The aircraft, with a 60-meter wingspan, would be powered by hydrogen and could deliver nine days of flight stamina. Each HAP could supply coverage over an area of up to 140 kilometres in diameter, and around 60 aircraft could blanket a country the size of the U.K., according to Cambridge Consultants.To read this article in full, please click here
Sensor power loss is the scourge of IoT.Deploying millions of sensors is pretty much a useless endeavor if the devices continually run out of power. IoT sensors can't collect or transmit data without power.That's one reason researchers are exploring ambient energy harvesting. Numerous projects have shown that small amounts of power can be generated by converting ambient energy in the environment – from stray magnetic fields, humidity, waste heat, and even unwanted wireless radio noise, for example – into usable electrical energy to power the IoT.To read this article in full, please click here
Sensor power loss is the scourge of IoT.Deploying millions of sensors is pretty much a useless endeavor if the devices continually run out of power. IoT sensors can't collect or transmit data without power.That's one reason researchers are exploring ambient energy harvesting. Numerous projects have shown that small amounts of power can be generated by converting ambient energy in the environment – from stray magnetic fields, humidity, waste heat, and even unwanted wireless radio noise, for example – into usable electrical energy to power the IoT.To read this article in full, please click here
Common red masonry bricks – the same type used in construction projects, including many data centers – can be adapted and used to store electricity, researchers claim.A team from Washington University in St. Louis has found that the red pigment in bricks can trigger a chemical reaction, in much the same way rust occurs, that enables bricks to store a significant amount of energy.Specialized bricks aren't required; the synthesis works with any kind of brick, according to an article published on the university's news site. The team used common bricks bought from the Home Depot in Brentwood, Missouri, for 65 cents apiece.To read this article in full, please click here
Common red masonry bricks – the same type used in construction projects, including many data centers – can be adapted and used to store electricity, researchers claim.A team from Washington University in St. Louis has found that the red pigment in bricks can trigger a chemical reaction, in much the same way rust occurs, that enables bricks to store a significant amount of energy.Specialized bricks aren't required; the synthesis works with any kind of brick, according to an article published on the university's news site. The team used common bricks bought from the Home Depot in Brentwood, Missouri, for 65 cents apiece.To read this article in full, please click here
Networks of radio-connected, intelligent sensors will propel the healthcare industry forward as increasing numbers of patients need care, researchers say. Two academic institutions recently shared details about how IoT-based technology might help mitigate clinical errors and improve caregiving in hospitals – an environment that's under increased strain due to coronavirus cases – as well as at home.The School of Engineering at Stanford University is exploring how a combination of electronic sensors and artificial intelligence could be installed in hospital rooms and elder care homes to help medical professionals monitor and treat patients more effectively.To read this article in full, please click here
The idea of integrating computer networks and the human body is driving research in a number of areas. Recently, two teams of researchers shared their respective projects, which explore how biological cells might become networked and how electronics could become directly integrated with human tissue.Both presentations were part of the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting & Expo.The first presentation, conducted by a team at the University of Maryland, is focused on communications networks that mimic electronic networks but are derived from biological cells. The second study, led out of University of Delaware, discusses the idea of interfacing hardware and human tissue.To read this article in full, please click here
Two wireless vendors say they have collaborated to significantly extend the useful range of millimeter-wave 5G transmissions beyond what had been widely considered its limits.
5G resources
What is 5G? Fast wireless technology for enterprises and phones
How 5G frequency affects range and speed
Private 5G can solve some problems that Wi-Fi can’t
Private 5G keeps Whirlpool driverless vehicles rolling
5G can make for cost-effective private backhaul
CBRS can bring private 5G to enterprises
Qualcomm and Ericsson have worked together in separate trials with two other companies to boost that distance from less than a mile (1.6km) to 3.8km in one case and to 5km-plus in the other, the companies claim.To read this article in full, please click here
Two wireless vendors say they have collaborated to significantly extend the useful range of millimeter-wave 5G transmissions beyond what had been widely considered its limits.
5G resources
What is 5G? Fast wireless technology for enterprises and phones
How 5G frequency affects range and speed
Private 5G can solve some problems that Wi-Fi can’t
Private 5G keeps Whirlpool driverless vehicles rolling
5G can make for cost-effective private backhaul
CBRS can bring private 5G to enterprises
Qualcomm and Ericsson have worked together in separate trials with two other companies to boost that distance from less than a mile (1.6km) to 3.8km in one case and to 5km-plus in the other, the companies claim.To read this article in full, please click here
Internet-based virtual healthcare, sometimes called telehealth or telemedicine, has seen a massive increase in usage during the pandemic, according to new research.A study by University of Michigan's National Poll on Healthy Aging (NPHA) found that a quarter of older adults aged between 50 and 80 had a virtual medical visit over a network in the first three months of the coronavirus pandemic. By comparison, in a similar poll from 2019, just 4% of people over 50 said they had ever had a virtual visit with a doctor.
READ MORE: Pandemic reveals the need for better telemedicineTo read this article in full, please click here
Researchers at University College London claim they’ve obtained a new top internet speed of 178Tbps – a fifth quicker than the prior record and fast enough to download the entire Netflix catalog in under a second, they say.To achieve that, the researchers used different bandwidth ranges than are typically used in commercial optical systems. Traditional fiber infrastructure uses bandwidth of 4.5THz with 9THz becoming more available commercially. In UCL experiments, the scientists used 16.8THz.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
To do this the researchers used a variety of amplifier technologies, customizing which ones they used for each wavelength to optimize its performance as measured by phase, brightness and polarization, according to a press statement put out by UCL. These customization packages are known as geometric signal constellations.To read this article in full, please click here
Researchers at University College London claim they’ve obtained a new top internet speed of 178Tbps – a fifth quicker than the prior record and fast enough to download the entire Netflix catalog in under a second, they say.To achieve that, the researchers used different bandwidth ranges than are typically used in commercial optical systems. Traditional fiber infrastructure uses bandwidth of 4.5THz with 9THz becoming more available commercially. In UCL experiments, the scientists used 16.8THz.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
To do this the researchers used a variety of amplifier technologies, customizing which ones they used for each wavelength to optimize its performance as measured by phase, brightness and polarization, according to a press statement put out by UCL. These customization packages are known as geometric signal constellations.To read this article in full, please click here
U.S. Army researchers are exploring the use of ultraviolet optical communications in battlefield situations because, under the right circumstances, the technology might support links that are undetectable to the enemy.One thing the researchers looked at was the effects of attenuation, the natural phenomenon of the signals getting weaker over distance. They wanted to know whether there was a distance range in which the signals were weak enough that adversaries likely couldn’t detect them, but still be strong enough that friendly receivers could. They say they observed that to be the case, but the research paper about their work doesn’t say what those distances are.To read this article in full, please click here
Digital content should be considered a fifth state of matter, along with gas, liquid, plasma and solid, suggests one university scholar.Because of the energy and resources used to create, store and distribute data physically and digitally, data has evolved and should now be considered as mass, according to Melvin Vopson, a senior lecturer at the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth and author of an article, "The information catastrophe," published in the journal AIP Advances.Vopson also claims digital bits are on a course to overwhelm the planet and will eventually outnumber atoms.To read this article in full, please click here
Digital content should be considered a fifth state of matter, along with gas, liquid, plasma and solid, suggests one university scholar.Because of the energy and resources used to create, store and distribute data physically and digitally, data has evolved and should now be considered as mass, according to Melvin Vopson, a senior lecturer at the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth and author of an article, "The information catastrophe," published in the journal AIP Advances.Vopson also claims digital bits are on a course to overwhelm the planet and will eventually outnumber atoms.To read this article in full, please click here
With the rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), are we getting to the point when computers will be smart enough to write their own code and be done with human coders? New research suggests we might be getting closer to that milestone.Researchers from MIT and Georgia Tech teamed with Intel to develop an AI engine, dubbed Machine Inferred Code Similarity (MISIM), that's designed to analyze software code and determine how it's similar to other code. What's most interesting is the potential for the system to learn what bits of code do, and then use that intelligence to change how software is written. Ultimately, a human could explain what it wants a software program to do, and then a machine programming (MP) system could come up with a coded app to accomplish it.To read this article in full, please click here
Privacy is one of the big holdups to a world of ubiquitous, seamless data-sharing for artificial intelligence-driven learning. In an ideal world, massive quantities of data, such as medical imaging scans, could be shared openly across the globe so that machine learning algorithms can gain experience from a broad range of data sets. The more data shared, the better the outcomes.That generally doesn't happen now, including in the medical world, where privacy is paramount. For the most part, medical image scans, such as brain MRIs, stay at the institution level for analysis. The result is then shared, but not the original patient scan data.
READ MORE: Cisco challenge winners use AI, IoT to tackle global problemsTo read this article in full, please click here
Privacy is one of the big holdups to a world of ubiquitous, seamless data-sharing for artificial intelligence-driven learning. In an ideal world, massive quantities of data, such as medical imaging scans, could be shared openly across the globe so that machine learning algorithms can gain experience from a broad range of data sets. The more data shared, the better the outcomes.That generally doesn't happen now, including in the medical world, where privacy is paramount. For the most part, medical image scans, such as brain MRIs, stay at the institution level for analysis. The result is then shared, but not the original patient scan data.
READ MORE: Cisco challenge winners use AI, IoT to tackle global problemsTo read this article in full, please click here
Visible light communications (VLC) systems are an alternative to radio-based wireless networks and serve a dual purpose: They provide in-building lighting, and they use light waves for data transmission. VLC uses modulated light as a data carrier, while the visible spectrum provides light.Using VLC for data transmission has some advantages. It offers decent bandwidth; it offers security because walls, floors and roofs obstruct the data-carrying wavelengths, which reduces the risk of eavesdropping; and it's inexpensive since it's simply incorporated into light fixtures or, in emerging developments, worked into displays and other surfaces.To read this article in full, please click here
Visible light communications (VLC) systems are an alternative to radio-based wireless networks and serve a dual purpose: They provide in-building lighting, and they use light waves for data transmission. VLC uses modulated light as a data carrier, while the visible spectrum provides light.Using VLC for data transmission has some advantages. It offers decent bandwidth; it offers security because walls, floors and roofs obstruct the data-carrying wavelengths, which reduces the risk of eavesdropping; and it's inexpensive since it's simply incorporated into light fixtures or, in emerging developments, worked into displays and other surfaces.To read this article in full, please click here
Patrick Nelson