Archive for August, 2009

Accelerometers

Automotive, new technology | Posted by admin
Aug 29 2009

Accelerometers

New Technology Automotive

Tiny new technology which helps iphone, digital cameras do wonders.

Have you ever wondered how iphone’s cool features works ? How new laptops can protect their hard disk when it falls down ? How we get crisp images from a cameras even if we shake the device ? The answer is accelerometer.

Accelerometer in essence is not a new technology. Its been on the desk of researchers and scientists well from 1990s, but only recently with the help of latest technologies small scale accelerometers were made so that it can be used in the devices above mentioned.

Accelerometers are a special kind of device called MEMS- Micro Electro Mechanical System. There are various types of accelerometers. A simple one is having a cantilever beam which is suspended and some complex sensing circuitry. It converts the acceleration (force) to displacement which is then measured. New technology accelerometers looks nothing but like an IC (Integrated Circuit). It consists of a bubble producing system. It heats the gas bubble and another system senses the location of the hot bubble as the accelerometer is accelerated or tilted.

The application and use of new technology accelerometers are endless. Lets begin with the much awaited gadget of 2007, iphone.

Apple Iphone uses accelerometer to sense the tilt of the phone, so that it can switch from portrait and landscape modes.

New phones from Nokia such as 5500 uses accelerometers for many things. A small tap on the phone can control the music in phone. Nokia N95 and 70 also uses accelerometers. N95’s accelerometer function can be accessed even by third party software, but in N70 they use it only for tilt sensing in camera mode.

Sony Ericsson use accelerometers in a wide range of phones. In their phones you just need to shake the phone to change tracks. There are J2ME games incorporating accelerometer functions.

Are you tired, there are lot more to come, read along if you are that brave.

The Wii was a headache for the big players like Sony (PS) and Microsoft (Xbox). The Wii remote incorporate accelerometer for measuring tilt and movement so that it can be complemented on the screen.

Famous shoe brands such as Nike uses it to determine speed, distance of the runner. They attach the accelerometer in their shoes which does the sensing part. The result is shown on some device such as watch, which are also produced by Nike.

Leading laptops have a security feature that claims it uses new technology to protect the data at all cost, even if the laptop falls down. Wonder how ? Here also they use the accelerometer, which is obvious. So when the laptop falls down, the accelerometer picks the motion and the write current is turned off, so that the disk remains scratch free.

Cam coders and digital cameras use accelerometers for image stabilization and anti-blur capturing. They “snap” the CCD sensors in the cameras if they detect a movement.

Accelerometers are in automotive for quite long. Its with the help of this device that air bags work. Any quick reduction in speed, ie a negative acceleration, will trigger the air bags.

The use of accelerometer doesn’t stop here. Even in the previous post about Life Saving Helmet, they use accelerometers.

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Life Saving Helmets

new technology | Posted by admin
Aug 26 2009

Life Saving Helmets

New Technology

Wireless helmets that give coaches warning before players goes to concussion

lefe saving helmet+wireless+football

For those who haven’t seen American football (rugby), i will briefly describe whats the big deal. Imagine rhinos or SUVs ramming against other SUVs with forces exceeding 10 Gs. I am not going in detail about G and all, 10 G means pretty bad for the human body, in this case the “head” is affected. In the game, players try to knock other team’s ball carrier by directly hitting them with their SUV sized body. Its usual that players get knocked out or concussed in each game. Each year the number of players that pass out is in the order of 1000s or even more.

So with the help of new technologies like wireless connectivity, researchers found out a new technology that can save these players and help coaches keep their good player in good shape.

Its all in their helmets, which is known as Head Impact Telemetry System. These new helmets made with the latest technology packs an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a wireless transceiver (transmitter+receiver), nonvolatile memory, battery pack. Even with all these additions the helmet doesn’t goes out of shape. All these components just adds up to 175gms (thanks to new technology electronics) to the original helmet weighing 1-2 kg. With these additions instruments the helmet doesn’t feel any different from an ordinary helmet.

Before going in deep with the new technology, lets see why this new technology is needed. Well players get injured in the very physical game. Their collisions may cause headache, nausea, short term memory loss, even a brain injury.

The working of this device is very simple. The six accelerometers placed in helmet detect any sudden movements and the algorithm does certain calculations and decide whether the collision was lethal or not. Normally the lower limit of the force is 10 G. So when the player gets a hit greater than 10 G, the helmet sends data to the sideline about the exact force, area if impact, etc. wire-lessly. The coach and other dudes there can then study on the impact and decide whether to call the player in or not.

The new technology is not yet approved by NFL (National Football League). But for the safety of our favorite players lets hope it gets approved soon and it will become the part of regular uniform.

Tail: Andre Waters is a victim of brain injury caused from football. He is just 44 years old, but suffered from depression and later suicided. An autopsy of his body reveals that his brain was almost like a 80+ year old’s brain. The one who did autopsy said, its like the brain took repeated hits, which occurred during his playing career.

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Moving data using silicon chips

new technology | Posted by admin
Aug 24 2009

Moving data using silicon chips

New Technology Article

Using photons rather than electrons to move data in chips

Today the world is hungry for bandwidth and speed. But this is limited by the way we use to connect various points. If you think am speaking about two buildings or even two countries, you are wrong. Am speaking about interconnections in a single chip. At present the interconnects in an IC is made with copper. But what is happening is at luxurious speeds as 10 billion B/s (bits per seconds) these interconnects prove to be less efficient.

Continuous experiments have given many alternatives but at the cost of high price. The best one from the array is by using optical fibers and thus replacing photons instead of electrons. The advantage of this method is that the overall cost is less compared to other methods and the data rate you can achieve is far more than that achievable through copper connects.

What’s the big deal with these interconnects anyway huh? Imagine you can download movies with just a click rather than waiting for hours, simultaneous streaming of audio, video, teleconferencing, and you name it. Sounds cool, isn’t it? This is what is possible if we have optical fiber interconnects in the chip level.

The superiority of optical connection is best explained by the following example. Optical data can travel for long distances (say 10 km) without any attenuation. The data rate can be increased by a technique called WDM-wavelength division multiplexing.

Myself is a communication engineer, so I will elaborate on this. Distortion, interference these occurs when the wavelength/frequency of two signals in a single medium becomes equal or very close. So if you can transmit several distinct frequencies at the same time, then you can use the single medium to transmit all these at the same time. In short you are multiplying the capability of the medium’s data carrying capacity. Currently using WDM you can transmit over 40 different data signals into a thin hair strand size optical fiber, all running at the data rate of 10 GBps. wonderful isn’t it, copper connects can’t even dream about it.

So why isn’t this new technology not in your chips yet ? It isn’t simple as it sounds. Optical devices are made with materials such as lithium niobate, indium phosphide etc which are very exotic compared to silicon. So its very costly and expensive to fabricate these into a normal chips.

A normal optical fiber communication link requires the following parts.
Modulator-to convert electrical data into light
Transmitter-to transmit this light into the fiber
Optical fiber-the medium
Receiver-to receive the optical data
Demodulator-to convert optical data back to electrical data

What we need to do is to manufacture all these devices onto a single chip. This is the ultimate goal. What this step exactly means is you make the modulator, source, medium, detector, demodulator etc on the same silicon substrate. Researches have now enabled silicon to have optical properties. An optical channel can be made in silicon by literally etching a channel in the substrate. For source, silicon laser has been developed by Intel’s state-of-the art facilities. As for all the other parts, researches are going on.

Although they encountered many problems, they are troubleshooting them one by one. In short, the time for a single chip that is half the size of a postage stamp which is able to handle all the operations of whole building won’t be too long in the future.

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