Story 2014-09-12 2SAF Stanford Engineer Aims to Connect the World with Ant-Sized Radios

Stanford Engineer Aims to Connect the World with Ant-Sized Radios

by
Anonymous Coward
in security on (#2SAF)
story imageA Stanford engineering team has built a radio the size of an ant, a device so energy efficient that it gathers all the power it needs from the same electromagnetic waves that carry signals to its receiving antenna - no batteries required.
Designed to compute, execute and relay commands, this tiny wireless chip costs pennies to fabricate - making it cheap enough to become the missing link between the Internet as we know it and the linked-together smart gadgets envisioned in the "Internet of Things." "The next exponential growth in connectivity will be connecting objects together and giving us remote control through the web," said Amin Arbabian, an assistant professor of electrical engineering who recently demonstrated this ant-sized radio chip at the VLSI Technology and Circuits Symposium in Hawaii.

Much of the infrastructure needed to enable us to control sensors and devices remotely already exists: We have the Internet to carry commands around the globe, and computers and smartphones to issue the commands. What's missing is a wireless controller cheap enough to so that it can be installed on any gadget anywhere. "How do you put a bi-directional wireless control system on every lightbulb?" Arbabian said. "By putting all the essential elements of a radio on a single chip that costs pennies to make."

Cost is critical because, as Arbabian observed, "We're ultimately talking about connecting trillions of devices."
This is amazing stuff. Check out the website for pictures of the radio, which is smaller than Lincoln's forehead on an American penny, as well as links to the developers' website with more musings on the future of gadgets that remain connected and controllable.
Reply 6 comments

Interesting, but... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-12 13:58 (#2SAS)

...this is far from WiFi enabling your underwear.

"Now Arbabian envisions networks of these radio chips deployed every meter or so throughout a house (they would have to be set close to one another because high-frequency signals don't travel far)."

These things are going to require higher power transceiver stations to control, relay, and provide power.

Just as we need WiFi access points everywhere, we'd need AntRadio access points everywhere, and at a considerably higher density.

How is this significantly different from RFID (other than two-way operation)? The article makes it sounds as if they've made several successive semiconductor breakthroughs, but I don't know enough to judge whether it's overblown.

Re: Interesting, but... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-14 23:08 (#2SDJ)

Perhaps next gen wifi stations could have ant radio support... hey dude, my modem does DSL, LAN, WAN, a/b/g/n300/n600DB and ANT!

Localizers (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-12 15:27 (#2SB8)

This reminds me an awful lot of the Localizers from A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.

This Thread Has Gone Underground (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-12 20:59 (#2SC0)

For the record, no one can get to this thread now, because while this URL is currently

http://pipedot.org/story/2014-09-12/stanford-engineer-aims-to-connect-the-world-with-antsized-radios

the current front page points to
http://pipedot.org/story/2014-09-12/stanford-engineer-aims-to-connect-the-world-with-ant-sized-radios

which results in

"story not found - date [2014-09-12] title [stanford-engineer-aims-to-connect-the-world-with-ant-sized-radios]

Well, I guess it's simpler than using TOR. ;)

Re: This Thread Has Gone Underground (Score: 1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-14 23:05 (#2SDH)

TOR? Ha! In my day we had to shout incomprehensible garbage at each other to communicate in secret. Both ways! In the snow! Using our own cipher books and decrypter rings!