With the explosion of mobile devices and digital communication across the globe, the world of telecommunications has seen an awe-inspiring level of innovation and creativity. Continuing challenges and diverse applications, such as the need for secure communication in a military context or law enforcement, are driving ever more interesting and ambitious developments within the industry.
As suppliers to the telecoms industry, we at MPE Electronics are excited to see this technology develop. Here we take a look at five of the most exciting recent telecoms developments:
#1TipTalk
Wearable technology in the form of watches is nothing new but TipTalk is a watch strap that allows users to take phone calls by putting their finger in their ear. It accomplishes this by sending vibrations from the strap, through your wrist and to your fingertips which are then interpreted as sounds in your ear. Additionally, it works like a normal smart watch by vibrating when you get an alert and tracking activity.
#2 Fishbowl
To tackle the rise of data theft and privacy breaches, the US National Security Agency developed Fishbowl, a secure mobile phone architecture that uses double encryption and sends all communications through a special server to prevent anyone from listening in.
#3 Cognitive Radio
Military communications are particularly sensitive to interception by hostile forces. A potential solution to this, and to keep military wireless communications working well, is cognitive radio. Transceivers using this system will be able to automatically detect which communication channels are vacant and which are in use. The system will switch between the vacant ones and avoid the occupied ones.
#4 Synthetic Telepathy
Progress has already been made in allowing the human mind to communicate directly with computers. Although this technology has mainly been focused on the medical field, where it is helping patients with damaged sight, paralysis or prosthetic limbs (experiments have already seen patients able to use this technology to control a prosthetic hand), it is being considered as a secure, fast and efficient way for soldiers to communicate on the battlefield.
#5 T-Rays
In the search for greater bandwidths and faster data transfer, the Tokyo Institute of Technology demonstrated that the terahertz band (sometimes called T-rays) of the electromagnetic spectrum could be used to send information. This band occurs between microwaves and infrared light and has an incredibly high frequency, which makes it very difficult to manipulate. Researchers estimate that this frequency may be able to allow data transmission of up to 100 Gbit/s but only over a short range. They believe it may have longer range potential at very high altitudes and could be used for satellite to satellite or aircraft to satellite communication.
Behind every great technological innovation is a great printed circuit board (PCB) assembly. At MPE Electronics, we manufacture the type of sophisticated PCB assemblies used in innovative telecoms technology. Contact us here or call 01825 764822 to find out how we can help you.
