RADIO WAVESPRESTENTED BY ROSIE SHEWELL

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Above is a great introductory video into the evolution of radio waves from the company Agilent Technologies producing state of the art radio generators.

The following presentation explores the use of radio waves every day, and new

innovative technology incorporating radio waves…

USES OF RADIO WAVES The prime purpose of radio is to

convey information from one place to another through intervening objects such as buildings, without wires.

Long-range radio signals enable astronauts to communicate with the earth from the moon and carry information from space probes as they travel to distant planets.

Some celestial bodies emit strong waves that are observed with sensitive radio telescopes.

Besides being used for transmitting sound and television signals, radio is used for the transmission of data in coded form. In the form of radar it is used for sending out signals and picking up their reflections from objects in their path.

USES OF RADIO WAVES

For navigation of ships and aircraft the radio range, compass and time signals are widely used. Radio signals sent from satellites can be used for a precise indication of position. Digital radio provides improved audio clarity and volume.

The development of transistor and microelectronic devices led to the development of portable transmitters and receivers. An example of radio transceivers are mobile telephones.

There are various remote-control devices, including artificial satellite systems and automatic valves in pipelines, that are activated by radio signals.

Many telephones are transferred by radio instead of wires. Some routes are sent through the radio to get the information from the satellites.

WIRELESS PHONE RECHARGING

Wouldn’t it be cool if you never had to charge your cell phone again?

Nokia researchers are experimenting with new ways to charge mobile and wireless devices, cell phones and smartphones. The researchers are using ambient radio waves and have been able to harvest about 3.5 milliwatts of power with a prototype, according to the Nokia corporate blog. The goal is to eventually collect 50 milliwatts of power, which could fully charge a spent cell phone

What if your phone was able to stay charged just by collecting the radio waves that are already flying around the air around you. That is the technology that Nokia is working on today.

OPTICAL SWITCHES Internet data centers

have evolved to include hundreds of thousands of servers in a single facility. For such large-scale systems, it becomes a great challenge to design an network that provides high capacity, low complexity, low latency and low power consumption

This design combines the best features of electronics and optics. Exploiting recent advances in optics, offers bufferless networks. The optical switch is integrated with electronic self buffering, and switches at nanosecond speeds

The traditional approach is to build a network using switches and routers. This approach suffers from limited scalability in the aspects of power consumption, wiring and complexity. The optical switch network supports direct interconnection of huge number of server racks and provides switching capacity at the level of Petabit/s

MARKETING PROJECT APOLLO VNU and Nielsen Media Research, has

partnered with Arbitron Inc. On a marketing research project called “Project Apollo”. A portable people meter (PPM), developed by Arbitron and worn like a mobile phone, will use radio waves to record signals in the broadcast advertising wearers are exposed to. As with other Nielsen projects, this will rely on a consumer panel. When members of the panel return from shopping trips, they will scan their purchases with a barcode reader, and database technology will match the messages they received to actual purchases.

This new joint venture aims to get 70,000 people wearing the pager sized device in their waking hours. The meters automatically will pick up on codes in audio messages delivered through television, cable, and radio ads; recorded in-store announcements; and marketing on rented or purchased DVDs. It even intends to cover on-screen ads shown while moviegoers await the feature presentation.

In Project Apollo, messages can be coded at the broadcast level by a network interested in proving its value to advertisers. At the program level, coding will help networks price ads around and during popular shows. And at the commercial level, manufacturer-embedded codes will deliver feedback about the effectiveness of various message/media combinations.

U.S. MILITARY EXPANDS RAIDO WAVE TRACKING

The U.S. Department of Defense is expanding its use of an emerging technology that combines radio waves and computer networks to track shipments of military supplies, in what some consider the largest project of its kind.

The massive government agency, which runs the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, has recently expanded a multimillion contract for so-called radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, according to one of the military's primary suppliers of equipment.

This potentially major advance in the field of logistics, gives people the means to track the movement and location of supplies as well as identify particular shipments. The way they work is by attaching microchips to an object, such as a container of ammunition. The chip emits radio waves, transmitting a unique identification code that can be read by radio frequency scanning devices in an object's vicinity.

RADIO TECHNOLGIES ALLOW FOR FASTER MRI SCANS

Researchers from University of California, University of Minnesota, and Oxford University have developed new technology to speed up how fast neuro fMRI functions. A single pulse of radio

waves is used to excite the hydrogen atoms, but the magnetic fields are rapidly reversed elicit about 50 to 100 echoes before the atoms settle down. The multiple echoes provide a high-resolution picture of the brain.

Using echo planar imaging (EPI), fMRI vividly distinguishes oxygenated blood funneling into working areas of the brain, from deoxygenated blood in less active areas.

SPIRAL RADIO WAVES The bandwidth available

to mobile phones, digital television and other communication technologies could be expanded enormously by exploiting the twistedness as well as wavelength of radio waves. Is the claim made by a group of scientists in Italy and Sweden, who have shown how a radio beam can be twisted, and the resulting vortex detected with distant antennas.

Visser says that the work could also have other useful applications. For example, he says, radio waves could be used to make a scaled-up version of an optical spanner. Conceivably, he says, this could allow small toxic or radioactive objects to be handled remotely