Scientists Develop Underwater Wireless Internet For ‘Deep-Sea’ Communication

As reported by International Business Times: You can hardly walk through a café, subway station or even a public park without picking up WiFi on your smartphone. Almost anywhere you turn, there’s a wirelessInternet network to greet you. But there’s one spot the mobile Web can’t go: underwater.

Water poses a problem for wireless communications, which employs almost the same technology as walkie-talkies, cell phones and other mobile devices to convert the 1s and 0s of computer code into radio waves. Radio waves travel poorly through water, UCSB’s ScienceLine noted, especially at the frequency the Internet requires.

While very low frequency radio waves – waves with a frequency between 3 and 30 kilohertz – are used in submarine communication systems, Internet radio waves have to transmit at frequencies of 2.4 gigahertz or 5 gigahertz in order to accommodate larger data (How Stuff Works).

A prime example of the limitations of underwater communications is the robotic vehicle sent down to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. The vehicle needed a very heavy and expensive cable attached to it in order to communicate with a boat 12,500 feet, or about 2.4 miles, above it.

Researchers from the University of Buffalo are developing a way to wirelessly transmit the Internet underwater. According to Phys.org, they recently tested a system in Lake Erie, just south of downtown Buffalo, N.Y. They submerged two 40-pound sensors into the water, and then communicated with them wirelessly through a laptop.

“A submerged wireless network will give us an unprecedented ability to collect and analyze data from our oceans in real time," Tommaso Melodia, a University of Buffalo associate professor of electrical engineering and the project’s lead researcher, said in a press release on the university’s website. “Making this information available to anyone with a smartphone or computer, especially when a tsunami or other type of disaster occurs, could help save lives.”

Current underwater communication technology, like that used by the Navy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, relies on sound waves.  

NOAA’s tsunami sensors, for example, located on the sea floor transmit information to buoys on the surface through the use of acoustic waves. Technology on the buoy then turns that information into radio waves.  

The university’s research is funded by the National Science Foundation, a U.S. government agency that sponsors research in non-medical fields of science and engineering, including the recently shuttered Antarctic research program.

The reason for developing underwater wireless Internet isn't so you can scuba dive and shop Amazon at the same time. Researchers hope that by improving underwater communication, they can make improvements in tsunami detection, pollution monitoring and offshore oil and natural gas exploration. 

World’s Fastest Wireless Network Hits 100 Gigabits per Second, Can Scale to Terabits

As reported by Extreme Tech: German researchers have combined photonics and electronics to create a world-record-breaking wireless network that can send and receive data at a heady 100 gigabits per second (Gbps). This beats the same team’s previous world record of 40Gbps. At 100Gbps, or a transfer rate of 12.5 gigabytes per second — ten times faster than Google Fiber — you could copy a complete Blu-ray disc in a couple of seconds.

To achieve such a sizable data rate, researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) used a massive swath of bandwidth at around 240 GHz — close to the terahertz frequency range. To create the signal, two laser beams (carrying the data) are mixed together (using a photon mixer made by NTT Electronics). An electrical signal results, where the frequency of the signal (237.5 GHz in this case) is the difference between the two optical signals. A normal antenna is then used to beam the signal to the receiver, where a cutting edge chip fabricated out of fast-switching III-V transistors (pictured below) is required to make sense of the super-high-frequency signal.

KIT’s 100Gbps wireless network is exciting for two reasons. The first is the most obvious: Yay, faster download speeds! Second, because the wireless signal is generated by a laser signal, it’s an ideal technology to tack on the end of a fiber network. For example, if you have high-speed fiber coming into a telephone exchange or mobile base station, you could then use KIT’s wireless tech to cover the last mile to your home. So far, KIT has only created a 100Gbps network over a distance of 20 meters in the lab — but last year’s 40Gbps world record was set using similar hardware over a range of one kilometer, across the rooftops of the city of Karlsruhe, Germany.

Perhaps most importantly, though, KIT transmitted 100Gbps using a single data stream. In the case of conventional WiFi, a single connection — between your router and laptop, for example — in reality consists of dozens of data streams, which are squeezed over the same channel with clever techniques such as multiplexing and MIMO (multiple antennae). These same techniques could be used on KIT’s 100Gbps data streams, boosting total link speed to terabits per second — or entire Blu-ray movies in just a fraction of a second. (See: Infinite-capacity wireless vortex beams carry 2.5 terabits per second.)

Both the 40Gbps and 100Gbps world record were part of the Millilink project, a project funded by the German government to bring broadband internet connections to rural and under-connected areas. The project’s entire budget was just two million euros ($2.7 million). It makes you wonder what could be done to the abysmal state of rural internet access in the US and elsewhere if we actually invested some money into it.

How the Latest Smartphones Could Turn Us All Into Activity Trackers

As reported by Wired: While much has been said of the A7 chip in the new iPhone 5S — arguably the “world’s first consumer ARM-based [system-on-a-chip]” — its associated new M7 coprocessor was surprisingly under-hyped, by both industry media and Apple.

For the first time, motion sensing occurs in a separate processor, which makes constant activity tracking using the gyroscrope, compass, and accelerometer sensors more power-efficient withoutturning on the rest of the A7 chip. This means we’ll start to see more Quantified Self (QS) tracking apps detecting steps and stair-climbing, bringing Fitbit and Jawbone capabilities to our phones. And the M7 does all this without a noticeable drain on the battery.

But that’s the sticking point: noticeable. The introduction of the M7 means Apple could collect this activity and movement data in the background without affecting our iPhone experience. Apple says that the M7 coprocessor only stores accelerometer data for up to seven days, but the capability remains.¹

Activity tracking used to be a very conscious, active decision. There was a process of deciding what to track, and perhaps buying a device or turning on an app to track it. We also had to remember to put on our wrist bands or clip our Fitbits to our clothes.

Now, with the M7, activity tracking comes as an automatic feature on the device that most of us carry with us all day, every day (Google and Motorola’s Android-based Moto X features a similar coprocessor). The capability to track activity using the existing sensors in our smartphones was there in previous models. And apps like Moves, Human, and Saga had started to take advantage of accelerometer, gyroscope, and GPS information to turn the phones we already carry into activity trackers. But these early applications were still pretty battery intensive.

When a phone becomes a powerful body activity tracker, it's
a whole different story.

With the M7, the phones in our pockets can keep on tracking — and possibly do more: “Because where we go, so go our phones.”

We have reason to be wary. We were surprised to find out that Google tracked our walking and bicycling activities when they first surfaced the data in Google Now cards. When we discovered a couple years ago that the iPhone was storing a location cache file based on cell tower and Wi-Fi network triangulation, Apple didn’t even show us that data — it had to be hacked.

It’s not so far-fetched to imagine that companies like Apple and Google would have an interest in gathering such large-scale activity data now that they have sensors in place to capture this information efficiently. Maybe they just want to know how we use our phones to deliver a better experience. Maybe they want to make better products. For Apple, large-scale activity data from all its iPhone 5S users could provide development fodder for its much-rumored wearable smartwatch. Apple already uses that data to optimize battery life: to stop network pinging when our phones haven’t moved for a while (sensing that we are likely sleeping), or to not try to pick up Wi-Fi signals as we fly past in a car (sensing that we don’t need it then).

Forget such context-aware performance optimization. And this goes beyond surveillance of communications metadata. When a phone becomes a powerful body activity tracker, it’s a whole different story.

The M7 coprocessors introduce functionality that some may instinctively identify as “creepy.” Even Apple’s own description hints at eerie omniscience: “M7 knows when you’re walking, running, or even driving…” While it’s quietly implemented within iOS, it’s not secret for third party apps (which require an opt-in through pop-up notification, and management through the phone’s Privacy settings).² But as we know, most users blindly accept these permissions.

It all comes down to a question of agency in tracking our physical bodies.

The fact that my Fitbit tracks activity without matching it up with all my other data sources, like GPS location or my calendar, is comforting. These data silos can sometimes be frustrating when I want to query across my QS datasets, but the built-in divisions between data about my body — and data about the rest of my digital life — leave room for my intentional inquiry and interpretation.

We’re already living in a world where our clicks and queries are analyzed as signals of our digital lives; it’s the exchange we’ve made for a free, advertising-supported internet. Are we now entering a phase where the physical world — through the interface of our bodies — is also subject to surreptitious tracking in exchange for staying connected while mobile?

There aren’t yet a lot of apps designed to take advantage of the M7’s low battery-consuming, activity-tracking potential, so coverage around the Apple announcement only acknowledged its potential and pointed to the trend of “ambient intelligence.”

Of course we can get excited about the potential new applications of the latest smartphone features, but we shouldn’t let that excitement blind us to the more insidious potential uses of those same features. We put a lot of faith and trust in our favorite tech companies to do the right thing with our data, and to make our lives easier and better with it. But we need to have a critical dialogue about the uses of data that we are and are not comfortable with.

What if the M7 sensed our sedentary lives and offered those data points to underwrite insurance, for instance? Without some transparency about how phone manufacturers intend to use the data, or confirmation that they are even collecting it outside of a specific application’s use, we can’t be sure.

Smartphones are just the start. Sensors are starting to show up in more of our appliances and devices. With activity tracking on our phones, a few quantified selves turns into a quantified society … whether we are aware of it or not.

¹ Correction 3:35 EST 10/10/13 This line was clarified to explain how the M7 stores data after Apple responded to the author’s request for comment.

² Correction 3:35 EST 10/10/13 This line was clarified to explain that users give permission to track motion activity in third party apps.

GPS for Elderly Demonstrates Dementia Challenge

As reported by Bloomberg: Gill Stoneham had fallen, and she couldn't get up.

Her husband, Bernard, saw she hadn't moved for 11 minutes and knew something was wrong. That’s because Gill, 73, who has vascular dementia, carries a GPS device the size of a pager that enables him to track her movements online. Alarmed, he went out and found her stuck in a muddy field near their home in Chichester, England. She had slipped while walking her cocker spaniel Oliver.

“Without the locator, I wouldn't have known where to look,” especially as Gill had strayed from her normal route, Bernard Stoneham, 69, said in an interview.

At least 35.6 million people have dementia, with Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia the most common forms, according to the World Health Organization. About 40 percent of them get lost, and half of those who are missing for more than 24 hours die or are seriously injured, according to studies.

That means GPS systems like the one used by the Stonehams are increasingly in demand. Dementia care costs about $600 billion a year worldwide and is projected to rise to $1.1 trillion by 2030, according to Alzheimer’s Disease International. In high-income countries, the non-medical costs - - paid social care in homes and facilities and unpaid care by family members -- account for 85 percent of the total.

More Freedom

Chichester, a town known for its Roman past and medieval cathedral, is part of a growing movement to use GPS devices that promise dementia patients more freedom and their caregivers less anxiety. The spread of the technology across Europe and in the U.S. is drawing concern from advocates for the elderly, who say GPS tracking shouldn't become a substitute for quality care.

The MindMe GPS devices, which can locate a carrier’s whereabouts every four minutes, are connected to Careline, a round-the-clock community call center that can liaise with local police and fire departments.

MindMe, developed by entrepreneur Adrian Wolf, costs 125 pounds ($200), with the 24/7 response service costing an additional 14.50 pounds a month. It’s being used in several cities around the U.K. including Chichester, as well as in Finland and the Netherlands, Wolf said. Care centers in Italy and Switzerland may adopt it as well, he said.

“We are looking to expand throughout Europe and the U.S. as quickly as possible because we know there is a huge demand for the dementia locator,” Wolf said in an interview.

Text Alerts

A newer version of MindMe enables patients to push a large round button to talk to a Careline operator through the device, helping seniors who don’t use mobile phones or who become too panicked to dial emergency numbers, said Brenda Jackson, manager of Careline. It can also send text message alerts to relatives or carers if a patient moves beyond a fixed distance.

Norman McNamara, who has lived with dementia for six years, said he would sign up for a GPS device “in a heartbeat,” given his fear of dying from malnutrition or dehydration if he gets lost, even with the round-the-clock care provided by his wife Elaine. He said he feels so strongly about the technology he is helping to develop a competing GPS program to be unveiled Oct. 20, he said.

“Not only will GPS give me peace of mind, it could quite possibly extend my life,” McNamara said in an interview in London. “I want to go on holiday without worrying about how I will be; I want to be able to walk into town on my own, or catch a bus, a taxi, anything where I don’t have to have Elaine giving up all her time.”

No Panacea

Caregivers and patients shouldn't rely too much on the devices, which could be abused, advocates for the elderly say.

“We are concerned this new technology would be used to replace human care,” said Neil Duncan-Jordan, spokesman for the U.K.’s National Pensioners Convention.

That’s particularly worrisome when the state of care for retirees is already “appalling,” he said. Several local governments have suffered budget cuts, resulting in employment of poorly trained low-paid workers, and almost 1 million retirees who need some kind of care are denied any help at all, according to the convention.

Gill Stoneham of Chichester had been attending a memory clinic until about four years ago, when the program ended because of budget cuts, Bernard Stoneham said. The local Rotary Club is trying to pick up the slack by organizing monthly events such as cathedral tours and cream teas, he said.

Patient Consent

“We’re quite fortunate to have a forward-thinking council, but there’s a huge gap in support services,” he said.

Consent to use the technology is also an issue, according to Duncan-Jordan. Some local authorities require the patient’s consent, while others will only ask for the consent of relatives with power of attorney, he said.

“The rights of individuals are not properly regulated in this respect,” he said.

In the U.S., the Alzheimer’s Association provides a GPS tracking service through a dedicated device similar to MindMe, a mobile phone, or a device installed on a car. More people may be interested in something that resembles a watch, said Beth Kallmyer, vice president of constituent services at the association.

“With a pocket device, you can set that down and forget it,” Kallmyer said.

GPS devices are diverting attention away from the key goal of good dementia care -- to interpret and respond to what is driving the wandering, said Desmond O’Neill, professor of geriatric medicine at Trinity College in Dublin.

“Wandering is not a disease but a form of communication,” O’Neill wrote in the British Medical Journal.

People with dementia may walk or wander as a response to stress and anxiety, to relieve boredom or pain, because they are confused about the time, or are searching for the past, among a variety of reasons, according to the Alzheimer’s Society.

While McNamara, the dementia patient and founder of the Torbay Dementia Action Alliance in Devon, would rather not wander, he said it is a reality that he has to live with.

“These GPS systems will save lives,” McNamara said. “We have the technology; why not use it?”

SpaceX Grasshopper Rocket Makes a Half-Mile Hop, Before Landing Again

As reported by NBC News: SpaceX's Grasshopper rocket prototype made another record-setting vertical takeoff and landing this week from the California-based company's test pad near McGregor, Texas. But what's really cool about Oct. 7's half-mile (744-meter) ascent and controlled descent is the amazing view from a remote-controlled hexacopter that captured the video clip.

This is what a rocket launch and landing is supposed to look like.

The 10-story craft is testing the technologies that would be required to have the first stage of a rocket fly itself back to base after launch. The Grasshopper consists of a Falcon 9 first-stage tank, Merlin 1D rocket engine, landing legs and a steel support structure.

Last month's launch of a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket provided a real-world test of rocket reusability, and although the test wasn't completely successful, it's only a matter of time before SpaceX gets it right.Then everything changes.

Earlier Grasshopper tests:

• August 2013: Sideways test to 250 meters
• July 2013: Grasshopper rises 325 meters
• April 2013: Grasshopper at 250 meters
• March 2013: Grasshopper at 80 meters
• December 2012: Grasshopper at 40 meters
• November 2012: Grasshopper at 5.4 meters
• September 2012: First flight test at 2 meters

The American Highway Map is Dead. Long Live the American Highway Map.

It would seem, in the days of GPS, that the common
paper road map is obsolete, but it has not outlived its
usefulness to us as a nation. A look at an icon of the
American Century, in transition.

As reported by Esquire: Let us now turn our lamentations, in these days of creative destruction, to the lowly state highway map.

For the last several years, publication has been on the decline nationwide. In the waning days of the summer vacation season, the Missouri Department of Transportation cut the print run of its latest highway map from 5 million to 2.7 million in an effort to save about $350,000. This development carried the weight of portent. If it can happen in the Show-Me State—the Ozarks, in my experience at least, are not the sort of place that particularly rewards unguided navigation—it can happen anywhere.

It’s not just Missouri. In an informal poll (I sent an e-mail to all fifty state transportation department spokespersons; half a dozen or so responded), little hope emerged for the preservation of the printed state highway map. B.J. Doughty, spokesman for the DOT in Tennessee, cited “large amounts of leftover maps.” “We give out free maps every August at our state fair, and those numbers have dropped,” said Kevin Gutknecht in Minnesota. “Since discontinuing the service, we have not had much complaint,” said Lars Erickson in Washington State, where the last maps rolled off the presses in 2008.

The suspects are usual: technology, in this case particularly GPS. And the precedents are familiar: Video v. the Radio Star, Craigslist v. Your Daily Paper, Mobile Telephony v. Any Semblance of Civility. One by one, fast and then faster, the lifestyle tools of the American Century have become relics. For those of us old enough to remember, their decline has made a parlor game out of counting the household essentials our children will never know: a Polaroid, a phone book, a transistor radio—a parlor game, for that matter.

This, then, would seem to be the moment to mark the passage of an icon, dwelling in fond detail on the cartoon images of filling station attendants, and working in a small joke about how tough the darned things were to fold. According to James R. Akerman, director of the Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library in Chicago, state governments, oil companies, motor clubs, and other organizations with an interest in the promotion of automotive travel produced “tens of billions” of road maps over the course of the twentieth century.

As a symbol of the promise of the highway, the maps burrowed their way into the national psyche. Dots moving along a map became a staple of road trip movies. John Steinbeck, preparing to tour the country with a dog named Charley, denounced travelers “so immersed in road maps that they never see the countryside they pass through, and others who, having traced a route, are held to it as though held by flanged wheels to rails.” Bruce Springsteen sang about Wanda, who worked at the Route 60 Bob’s Big Boy, sitting on his lap, wiping greasy fingers on a Texaco road map. Kerouac’s Sal Paradise, planning a long drive through Texas down to Mexico, studied his in dizzied ecstasy: “I looked over the map: a total of over a thousand miles… I couldn't imagine this trip. It was the most fabulous of all.”

In the heyday of the road map, “it wasn’t just about the mode of transportation,” Akerman told me. “It was how people felt about seeing the whole country.”

Nostalgia for that fading feeling suggests the existing maps will continue to trade hands among people like Wayne Stitt, a fifty-three-year-old bus driver from Richmond, Virginia, who has collected 4,241 of them, starting on a family vacation when he was twelve. “And I’m still looking for any one I don’t have yet,” he told me. “I hate to see anything just get thrown away.”

He is not alone. Last month, several hundred members of the Road Map Collectors Association gathered in Indianapolis—a fine motoring town if ever there was one—for their annual convention. A rare Grizzly Gasoline map, expected to sell for more than three hundred dollars, did not find a buyer. But “there were lots of other good maps available, so there was a lot of buying and selling and trading going on,” reported Terry Palmer, a sixty-year-old collector from Dallas. He was particularly heartened by the sight of a crowd around the dollar table, where the general public buys donated maps to support the group’s operations. “There were some young people buying,” he said. “That was neat to see.”

To Palmer, whose e-mail address makes reference to both the Road Runner and Route 66, road maps constitute a document of life’s experience. Upon returning stateside from service in Vietnam, he set out on a seventeen-state road trip, winding from New Mexico through Texas up to Maryland and back through Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Colorado. Aside from hanging on to the maps, which formed the base for a collection now numbering about thirty-five hundred, he came to a decision regarding a proposal. Diana said yes. They are still married. “If you keep a good map around,” he told me, “you’ll never have to stop and ask for directions.”

For those similarly inclined, other sources can be found. AAA, the motor club best known for fixing your grandmother’s flat tire, provides printed maps on request, including the detailed TripTik—something of an ur-Google Maps, now available in app form as well—preferred by anxious vacationers. “There is, and always will be, a great need for mapping and routing information,” said Desmond Jordon, a club spokesman, “even if the way many people choose to receive that information changes.” And Rand McNally produces millions of printed maps every year. Texas, California, and Florida, big states with big tourist attractions, sell the best. “State maps have declined, but not at the rate of the local street maps, which have been more impacted by Web and app mapping,” said Amy Krouse, a company spokeswoman. She expects demand to hold steady. Borrowing a term from computer science, she mentioned two “key use cases”: “sitting around the kitchen table, planning a trip,” and “as a trusted backup in the car—no battery required.”

But blaming a technological innovation for the demise of the highway map may oversimplify matters. The roads themselves have become more clearly marked. The burning desire to see the country by car, in a time of global warming and sharply divided red and blue political states, has cooled. And, of course, there are limits to the powers of GPS.

For the dwindling number of map devotees, freedom of a distinctly American variety lies beyond those same limits. “I think that, deep down, people still like the idea of being out on their own, traveling without any agenda,” Akerman said. “The map is a pretty powerful symbol of that.”

But then maybe the map is more than a symbol. Maybe the map is the thing itself. We have grown disenchanted with the pursuit of wide-open spaces. We have returned to the cities. We have lost the ability to appreciate or even handle isolation. When we must pass between metropolises on the ground, our cars all but drive themselves. We need the map, not to tell us where we’re going, or even where we've been, but to show us, in the distance between those big dots and stars, where we are.

Wireless Behemoths AT&T and Verizon Had Better Not Miss the Internet of Things

The vision looking forward for wireless networking
will need to be creative if carriers are going to
continue to rake in the huge profits they have seen
in the past.  The Internet Of Things (IOT) may be a
way for wireless carriers to avoid becoming 'data pipes'
for the next generation of innovators.

As reported by Businessweek: It’s been quite a wireless party over the past five years, with Verizon (VZ) bringing in $319 billion (via Verizon Wireless) and AT&T (T) taking $291 billion. But the end of the telecom giants’ money-printing era may be in sight.

The frightening thing for wireless providers is that the world is running out of fresh consumers to pay for service. A report published on Thursday by technology market-research firm Ovum predicts that mobile industry revenue will decline for the first time ever in 2018. New connections will have slowed to about 4 percent annually by then, while wireless revenue will grow at less than half that rate, the study maintains.

This doesn't inevitably doom such companies as AT&T and Verizon, neither of which has suffered through a year with profit below $4 billion in more than a decade.

Indeed, Ovum hasn't taken into account the so-called Internet of things, in which wired consumer products and industrial equipment send and receive information over wireless networks. This report assumes that the telecom companies bring in no fresh revenue in this area—which decidedly won’t be the case. Ovum’s own unpublished estimates put machine-to-machine wireless revenue at $44 billion by 2018, up from $13 billion last year. That number could be overly pessimistic because it includes only industrial usage, not demand by consumer products with wireless connections.

The promise of Internet-connected factories, cars, and dog collars is no secret. Just this week, AT&T said it is collaborating with GE (GE) on Internet-connected industrial equipment. Some companies will make a lot of money here. But after years of reclining on ever-growing stacks of wireless revenue, will the telecommunications giants move quickly enough to maintain revenue and profits?

“The wild card is whether telcos can adapt quickly enough to take advantage before the opportunity gets usurped by others,” says Sara Kaufman, an analyst at Ovum who worked on the report. “Obviously the telcos have a huge compelling reason to make every effort to do that, but we’ve certainly seen that telcos, generally speaking, don’t move quickly and adapt.” Kaufman lays out two potential futures: one in which telecoms figure out a way to develop services for the Internet of things and one in which other companies do. In the first scenario, the party probably continues; in the second, telecommunications companies become dumb pipes selling connectivity at low prices to businesses that reap most of the rewards.

Recent precedents abound in which telecoms lost out by failing to exploit changes in how people use such wireless services as group messaging and voice-over-Internet calling. The Internet of things could represent a more fundamental shift. AT&T and Verizon need to figure it out.