Amazing new wireless tech: Breaking Shannon's Law

http://onlivespot.blogspot.com/2011/06/steve-perlman-unveils-amazing-new.html

by jedi_stannis • 15 years ago

56 26 15 years ago

onlivespot.blogspot.com

sp3322• 15 years ago

The "interesting" bit starts at 55 minutes.

I'm really excited for the potential of wireless technologies like this to break the last mile death grip companies like AT&T and Comcast have. We are at the point where spectrum regulation/management isn't even necessary, except for legacy devices.

zwieback• 15 years ago

I very much hope I'm wrong but it sounds pretty fishy to me. When the guy in the audience asked the question about what modulation this new radio uses he got a marketing babble answer unworthy of a university audience.

Working in sensor networks we could really use one of these breakthrough technologies and in the past year or two I've heard at least three vendors give the exact same pitch but as of today there's no technical detail that gives me much hope.

chopsueyar2• 15 years ago

Also, transmitting 30 miles. Is this an unlicensed frequency?

aidenn03• 15 years ago

They have developed on amateur frequencies since the FCC denied them an experimental license.

juiceandjuice• 15 years ago

Sounds like interferometric based MIMO from the description. Not breaking Shannon's law in that case.

Mvandenbergh• 15 years ago

It is, I've been doing a bit of poking around in the patent applications filed by this guy recently and that seems to be the gist of it. Unlike normal MIMO though, only the base station has multiple antennas, the mobile stations have one antenna each.

This leads to the downstream bandwidth being much higher than the upstream, but given that video is going to drive mobile bandwidth growth that is ok.

Basically what's happening is that a training signal from each of the base station antennas is constantly being monitored by the mobile station, channel information gets calculated and sent back to the base station.

The base station uses the channel vectors for each of the mobile stations (updated frequently because this is spatial multiplexing and mobile stations... move) to compute the signals for the entire antenna array.

The odd seeming stuff about energy not being transferred has to do with using a sort of inverse spatial coding where you can aim signal nulls at mobile stations that don't want to receive particular signals.

Relevant patents: http://patents.com/us-20110044193.html http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...

Kyotoku• 15 years ago

Can get the pdf here. Nice, Mvandenbergh! http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT741... and here http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATAPP...

dmbass3• 15 years ago

So are we supposed to believe that incumbent tech companies have no investments in new tech?

Canon is not working (or already passed) on the same stuff as Lytro? Samsung is not working (or already passed) on the same stuff as Nanosys? Cisco (or whoever) is not working (or already passed) on this type of stuff?

Anybody have examples of modern (within 10 years) stealthy startups/incubators that invented new hardware that revolutionized something?

qq66• 15 years ago

Lots of networking and database companies have invented new hardware+software combinations, upon which they are promptly acquired by Cisco and Oracle, respectively.

jfoutz• 15 years ago

Roku? revolutionize is a strong word, but they've had a lot of impact.

I'd throw makerbot out there as revolutionary, but that's still a very young market. - not stealthy though.

Tesla motors?

GHFigs• 15 years ago

When I look at Lytro I think of E-Ink and FingerWorks, both companies that (like Lytro) grew out of academia and both of whose technology has been significant (arguably revolutionary) in the last decade.

dmbass3• 15 years ago

Those are pretty good examples but it basically means that there is no reason to get excited about this now since it is many years away from making any kind of impact.

nl2• 15 years ago

Anybody have examples of modern (within 10 years) stealthy startups/incubators that invented new hardware that revolutionized something?

Tivo (just outside your 10 year limit though)

Flip Video

Roomba

SpaceX

Telsa

ramchip• 15 years ago

Can you really call something like Roomba a revolution? I've met a single person in my life with a Roomba. People everywhere still sweep manually.

dmbass3• 15 years ago

I see most of those as "revolutionary" applications of existing technologies/hardware. When I said hardware maybe I meant "technology"?

aphyr• 15 years ago

"They don't use wireless energy."

Please tell me more about your magical energy-free signal propagation!

In all seriousness, Shannon's entropy limit only applies to a single variable, modulated at a certain frequency. The only reason we apply this limit to radio is because we treat each radio frequency in a given zone as a single variable. In fact, you're perfectly free to use directed antennas or interferometry to establish multiple communication variables on the same frequency.

Ah, and indeed, at 1:19, Perlman mentions each cell phone on a separate spatial domain.

Since they say it's a single cell phone antenna, I'm guessing we're looking at multiple towers and interferometry between them, possibly taking advantage of the intensity dropoff with distance and timing data for spatial discrimination.

Periodic• 15 years ago

That explains the "bubble" comment. Things could be addressed somewhat by location. However, a moving target would be tough to track.

Nrsolis• 15 years ago

Aren't we using some interferometry techniques to communicate with the Voyager spacecraft?

sp3322• 15 years ago

In context, I think he meant that they don't use wireless energy in the same way as other radios.

spydum• 15 years ago

Seemed more like a plug for opposition of America Invents Act than some new wireless tech to me..

Not to say they haven't made some astounding break-through, but I didn't get the impression that they revealed anything of substance. They claim to have some experimental radios working that are able to beat Shannon's law, but reveal no details around it.

aidenn03• 15 years ago

What are the odds the FCC allows it?

lucisferre• 15 years ago

I think the meaning of 'law' has been lost here. When I was doing my masters in Info./Comm theory I remember coming across a much ridiculed paper that claimed to break Shannon's law. It was pretty funny but of course I can't find it now since a google search only turns up hits for this.

Amazing new wireless tech: Breaking Shannon's Law

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