Wireless Technologies Used Today Based on Decades of Work at Virginia Tech

Technologies used today by companies, such as Direct TV, Iridium Satellite, Bluetooth, and Globalstar, are based on satellite communications efforts started at Virginia Tech four decades ago in its Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

Beginning with their first NASA-funded project in 1971 and continuing through the 1990s, ECE professors Charles Bostian and Warren Stutzman led Virginia Tech's satellite communications efforts, building ground stations for global satellite communications and characterizing the propagation environment. "The work they started as members of Virginia Tech's Satellite Communications Group has impacted standards and real systems used by industry and government," says Jeff Reed, current director of Wireless@VT.

A defining moment for Virginia Tech's wireless researchers came when they started receiving major funding in 1993 from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Project Agency (DARPA). The first $1.7 million DARPA contract asked Virginia Tech to develop a revolutionary approach to wireless communications.

The Virginia Tech communications engineers combined new technologies in computer chips, antennas, and digital signal processing in a novel way, eventually allowing wireless devices to be extremely miniature, but able to adapt to interference in the radio channel. They accomplished their goals and increased the number of radio devices that could share a single radio frequency, thereby increasing the capacity of wireless users in a specific region of space.

"Companies spun out of this research," Reed said, including the first wireless communications company in Blacksburg, TSR Technologies, which later was sold to Grayson Electronics. In 1998, a second spin-off, Wireless Valley Communications Inc., was founded and later sold to Motorola for some $30 million. "People made their careers from the enabling technologies that we developed," Reed says.

In the 1990s, the wireless researchers at Virginia Tech began filing for patent after patent. Within a few years, some of the technologies they had developed included SIRCOM, an indoor channel modeling program; CELLSCOPE, a technology that identifies a person using a cellular phone; SMT, a site modeling tool for indoor communications that led to Wireless Valley Communications; Stallion, a high-performance computing device for handsets; and Interactive Video, a wireless mechanism for users to order products they see advertised on TV. All were available for licensing through Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Inc.

In one of the first highly publicized uses of CELLSCOPE, the FBI employed it in 1995 to track down Kevin Mitnick, the nation's most-wanted computer hacker, in Raleigh, N.C. The SMT software was licensed in its introductory year to leading communications companies, including Motorola, Ericsson, Hewlett Packard, Tellans, and Mobile System International.

Some of the other wireless projects the different groups were working on then are commonplace today, such as the creation of Bluetooth technologies that enable the wireless office emerging in the 21st century; software radio for wireless communication interoperability and smart antenna technologies to eliminate co-channel interference; and advanced wireless modems to support remote computing and high-data-rate wireless access to the Internet. They also were instrumental in improving cellular communications to prevent co-channel interference, and in allowing radio waves to penetrate into buildings. In the area of intelligent transportation systems, they were working on Global Positioning Systems more than a decade before they became popular Christmas presents for directionally challenged drivers.

MPRG founder Ted Rapapport authored the first textbook on modern wireless communications, called Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice in 1996. An instant classic in academia, some 30 universities from around the world adopted its use within the first 12 months, and thousands of engineers were trained using the knowledge coming from the Virginia Tech research laboratories.

As the wireless faculty moved into the 21st century, Virginia Tech became the leading research institution in the field of cognitive radios, called a new frontier for the world of wireless communications. Cognitive radios are intelligent radios that can determine the best way to operate in any given situation. "The new cognitive radios are similar to living creatures in that they are aware of their surroundings and understand their own and other users' capabilities and the governing regulatory constraints" and address the incompatible communications problems between emergency services, says Bostian. They also hold promise for rapid deployment of emergency communication infrastructure in the event of a disaster.

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Steps Towards Warship Invisibility

Naval warships might look like all-powerful vessels but they are also highly vulnerable to being spotted by the enemy. That fear of being detected has led the military to develop new stealth technologies that allow ships to be virtually invisible to the human eye, to dodge roaming radars, put heat-seeking missiles off the scent, disguise their own sound vibrations and even reduce the way they distort the Earth’s magnetic field, as senior lecture in remote sensing and sensors technology at Britannia Royal Navy College, Chris Lavers, explains in March’s Physics World.

Wars throughout the twentieth century prompted advances in stealth technologies. Some of the earliest but most significant strides towards invisibility involved covering ships with flamboyant cubist patterns – a technique known as “dazzle painting." During the Second World War, the US military even worked out a way of using lights to make the brightness of a ship match that of the background sea.

When British physicist Robert Watson Watt was charged with designing a "death ray" to destroy entire towns and cities during the Second World War, he calculated it impossible. He did conclude however that radio waves could be used to detect ships and aircrafts too far way to be seen by the naked eye.

Radar was born. For ships to dodge radar, both a ship’s geometry and a ship’s coating have to be considered. Radars are particularly receptive to right angles, which is why modern battleships are often peculiarly shaped. Special paint and foam-coating have also been used to cover ships, which convert radio-waves into heat and stop radio waves being reflected, rendering the signals useless.

The “stealthiest” ship that currently exists is Sweden’s Visby Corvette. Apart from being painted in grey dazzle camouflage and made of low-radar reflectivity materials, it also does not use propellers, which are the noisiest part of a ship. The vessel also has the lowest “magnetic signature” of any current warship.

But the next generation of warships could be truly invisible by exploiting “metamaterials” – artificially engineered structures first dreamt up by physicist John Pendry at Imperial College, London. Metamaterials are tailored to have specific electromagnetic properties not found in nature. In particular, they can bend light around an object, making it appear to an observer as though the waves have passed through empty space.

About the research, Chris Lavers writes, “If optical and radar metamaterials could be developed, they might provide a way to make a ship invisible to both human observers and radar systems, although the challenges of building a cloak big enough to hide an entire ship are huge.”

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NASA Selects 38 Partnerships to Advance Key Technologies

NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program Seed Fund has announced the selection of 38
partnerships that will advance key technologies to meet critical needs for NASA's mission. These Seed Fund projects will address technology barriers with cost-shared, joint-development programs.

The partnerships span 30 states and include nine universities, 23 small to medium-sized businesses, 17 large corporations and participation by all 10 NASA field centers.

For a complete list of selected organizations and information about NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program Seed Fund, see this page.

The one-year projects will involve collaboration among three principal partners: a NASA partnership manager at a field center; a co-principal investigator within a NASA program or project office; and an external co-principal investigator from the private sector, academia or other government laboratory.

Examples of selected partnership research areas include the pursuit of improved engine performance and reduced emissions in support of NASA aeronautics research; high-temperature materials for lunar lander engines to support NASA's exploration goals to return to the moon; optics to lower error rates of future space telescopes to support agency science technology needs; and a glass bubble insulation demonstration for cryogenic tanks of interest to NASA's space operations team.

An important element of the fund is the leveraging of financial resources because of contributions from all three partners. NASA's Innovative Partnership Program at NASA headquarters in Washington is contributing $9 million in funding from its Technology Transfer Partnerships budget, $13 million is being provided by NASA sources in programs, projects, or field centers, and $12 million from external partners for a total combined financial commitment of $34 million.

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NASA Selects 120 Small Business Innovation Research Projects

NASA has selected 120 proposals for negotiation of Phase 2 contract awards in the Small Business Innovation Research program, known as SBIR. The selected projects have a total value of approximately $72 million. NASA will award the contracts to 102 small high technology firms in 27 states.

NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program - with offices at NASA headquarters in Washington and all of the agency's field centers - collaborates with U.S. industry to develop pioneering technologies, infuse them into agency missions and transition them into commercially available
products and services.

The SBIR program supports NASA's mission directorates by working with them to competitively select ventures that address critical research and technology needs for agency programs and projects. The effort addresses specific technology gaps in mission programs and strives to complement other agency research investments. Program results have benefited NASA efforts, including modern air traffic control systems, Earth observing spacecraft, the space shuttle, the International Space Station and rovers on Mars.

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Volkswagen Shows Off Advanced Fuels Vehicles

Volkswagen of America is showing off advanced fuels models of some VW cars at the Designing Sustainable Mobility Summit, being held at Art Center College of Design in Southern California.

Summit attendees and Art Center students are being provided the experience of driving VW models running on biodiesel, ultra low sulfur diesel, hydrogen, and highly efficient gasoline engines on public roads.

"It's important to demonstrate that raising the bar in such important areas as fuel efficiency and emissions reduction isn't just accomplished with exotic or future-oriented technologies," says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal, which is hosting the summit's ride-and-drive. "Volkswagen's demonstration of its clean diesel and twincharger engines provides real-world examples of environmentally positive technologies that are operating on highways today."

At the event's Green Cars/Pasadena ride-and-drive, VW is fielding a Touareg V-10 TDI running on B5 biodiesel, a mixture of conventional ultralow sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel and renewable biodiesel. Diesel fuel that includes a mix of biodiesel burns cleaner and also helps displace fossil fuel use, contributing to energy diversity. VW has extended warranty protection to its models operating on B5 biodiesel as a way to encourage use of this cleaner fuel.

An advance look is also being offered of a highly efficient, twincharger gasoline engine Jetta in development. This Jetta's TSI engine provides higher power output from a smaller displacement engine while also achieving greater fuel efficiency and lower emissions. The TSI is popular in Europe and now is being considered for use in the U.S. It uses asupercharger to provide engine boost at lower rpms and an exhaust-driven turbocharger at mid-range rpms and higher.

At the summit, VW's Touran HyMotion hydrogen fuel cell vehicle not only shows Volkswagen's interest in this zero-emission fuel, but also showcases the company's breakthrough high-temperature fuel cell.

A decade of VW hydrogen vehicle development has led to a high-temperature fuel cell that provides a more compact, lighter, and more durable fuel cell system. This technology holds great promise to make fuel cell powertrains more economical, key to future mass production, the automaker says.


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DOE Spending on Alternate Energy Drops Drastically

The United States is even more dependent on crude oil and natural gas than it was almost 30 years ago but total budget authority for energy R&D at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) dropped by over 85 percent (in real terms) from 1978 to 2005, peaking in the late 1970s but falling sharply when oil prices returned to lower levels in the mid-1980s, a government watchdog agency finds.

"DOE’s R&D efforts have resulted in steady incremental progress in reducing costs for renewable energy technologies, reducing harmful emissions of coal-fired power plants, and improving safety and efficiency for nuclear power plants," the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in a new report. GAO is the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

Further development and deployment of advanced renewable, fossil, and nuclear energy technologies face several key challenges, GAO says.

Challenges for renewable technologies include developing (1) cost-effective technologies to
produce ethanol using agricultural residues and other biomass materials as well as the infrastructure for distributing ethanol, (2) new wind technologies to expand into low wind and offshore locations, and (3) improved solar technologies that can better compete with conventional technologies.

Challenges for fossil technologies are primarily associated with developing advanced coal gasification technologies to further reduce harmful emissions and reducing their high capital costs, GAO says. Challenges for advanced nuclear technologies include uncertainty about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s revised licensing process, investor concerns about high
capital costs, and the disposal of a legacy of spent nuclear fuel, the agency says.

GAO suggests that Congress consider further stimulating the development and deployment of a
diversified energy portfolio by focusing R&D funding on advanced energy technologies. President Bush and Congress have expressed an interest to focus more on alternative clean energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and to deal with the issue of global climate change.


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