Aalyria, a recent spinout from Google, is trying to build on other companies’ near successes. The company is revamping the software platform from the ambitious-yet-failed startup Loon to optimize and reconfigure networks in real time, using whatever connections are available. Aalyria is combining that tech with free-space lasers originally developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory […]
As anti-government protests spilled onto the streets in Cuba on July 11, something strange was happening on the airwaves. Amateur radio operators in the United States found that suddenly parts of the popular 40-meter band were being swamped with grating signals. Florida operators reported the signals were loudest there, enough to make communication with hams […]
5G has a power efficiency problem. If you already have a 5G smartphone, you may have noticed the latest generation of wireless drains your device’s battery life, so much so that operators including T-Mobile and Verizon have including “turning off 5G” in their lists of battery-saving tips. But 5G’s in-built inefficiencies also have implications for […]
Spies, gumshoes and hard-driving investigative reporters—no matter how amazing they may be at their jobs—all suffer one inescapable drawback: They don’t scale. By contrast, consider the case of Eliot Higgins. In 2012, this business administrator began blogging about videos and other social media feeds he was following on the conflicts in Libya and Syria. By systematically and minutely analyzing the […]
Imagine a teleconference but with holograms instead of a checkerboard of faces. Or envision websites and media outlets across the Internet that allow you to make haptic connections (i.e. those involving touch as well as sight and sound). Researchers studying the future of sixth-generation (6G) wireless communications are now sketching out possibilities—though not certainties—for the kinds […]
Modern cell phones are packed with radios to send and receive phone calls, text messages and high-speed data. In turn, each relies on a mix of technologies—for instance, the filters used to extract the desired signal from the welter of radio waves hitting the antenna are typically so-called acoustic devices based on piezoelectric crystals, whereas the […]
There’s a lot we don’t know about the ocean floor, thanks to crushing pressures and perpetual darkness. But there are still repercussions from what happens down there. Deep sea earthquakes, for example, can result in devastating tsunamis. So it would be nice to keep an eye on the ocean floor. Fortunately, despite the remote and […]
Backscatter radios encode data in reflected signals to offer wireless communications that consume as little energy as possible—but they can be limited by poor data rates. Now scientists at Nokia Bell Labs and their colleagues have developed backscatter radios capable of gigabit speeds, for potential use in the emerging Internet of Things and other devices, […]
Tom Marzetta is the director of NYU Wireless, New York University’s research center for cutting-edge wireless technologies. Prior to joining NYU Wireless, Marzetta was at Nokia Bell Labs, where he developed massive MIMO. Massive MIMO (short for “multiple-input multiple-output”) allows engineers to pack dozens of small antennas into a single array. The high number of […]
Edmon de Haro I have a friend who lives on a farm and for years had connected to the Internet through a slow and prone-to-fail DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) link. He was okay living without Netflix, but as an attorney, he would have sorely liked to teleconference with clients, particularly after COVID-19 arrived. So he […]