spectrum.ieee.org Open in urlscan Pro
151.101.129.91  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

/search/

<form action="/search/"><button type="submit" class="menu-global__submit fa fa-search" value="" aria-label="Submit"></button><input name="q" class="menu-global__text-input" type="text" placeholder="Search..." aria-label="Search"></form>

/search/

<form action="/search/"><label for="q" class="hide-text">Search: </label><input placeholder="Type to search" type="text" name="q" id="q" class="search-form__text-input"><button aria-label="Search" type="submit" class="search-form__submit"
    value="Search"><svg width="18px" height="19px" viewBox="0 0 18 19" version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
      <g id="Page-1" stroke="none" stroke-width="1" fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd">
        <g id="1376---Sample-Front-Page" transform="translate(-826.000000, -102.000000)" stroke="#0D0D0D" stroke-width="1.5">
          <g id="Light-/-Nav" transform="translate(816.857864, 96.000000)">
            <g id="Search-Icon" transform="translate(7.307612, 5.000000)">
              <path
                d="M11.631728,14.6819805 C15.2215789,14.6819805 18.131728,11.7718314 18.131728,8.18198052 C18.131728,4.59212964 15.2215789,1.68198052 11.631728,1.68198052 C8.04187711,1.68198052 5.13172798,4.59212964 5.13172798,8.18198052 C5.13172798,11.7718314 8.04187711,14.6819805 11.631728,14.6819805 Z M11.631728,14.5814755 L11.631728,21.5814755"
                id="Combined-Shape" transform="translate(11.631728, 11.631728) rotate(-45.000000) translate(-11.631728, -11.631728) "></path>
            </g>
          </g>
        </g>
      </g>
    </svg></button></form>

Text Content

IEEE.orgIEEE Xplore Digital LibraryIEEE StandardsMore Sites
Sign InJoin IEEE


See our latest special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories From Innovation’s
Edge” →

View →
Close bar
The Eight-Year Leap Second Delay Might Not Be As Bad As It Seems
Share
FOR THE TECHNOLOGY INSIDER
Search:
Explore by topic
AerospaceArtificial IntelligenceBiomedicalClimate TechComputingConsumer
ElectronicsEnergyHistory of
TechnologyRoboticsSemiconductorsTelecommunicationsTransportation

IEEE Spectrum
FOR THE TECHNOLOGY INSIDER



TOPICS

AerospaceArtificial IntelligenceBiomedicalClimate TechComputingConsumer
ElectronicsEnergyHistory of
TechnologyRoboticsSemiconductorsTelecommunicationsTransportation


SECTIONS

FeaturesNewsOpinionCareersDIYEngineering Resources


MORE

NewslettersPodcastsSpecial ReportsCollectionsExplainersTop Programming
LanguagesRobots Guide ↗IEEE Job Site ↗


FOR IEEE MEMBERS

Current IssueMagazine ArchiveThe InstituteThe Institute Archive


FOR IEEE MEMBERS

Current IssueMagazine ArchiveThe InstituteThe Institute Archive


IEEE SPECTRUM

About UsContact UsReprints & Permissions ↗Advertising ↗


FOLLOW IEEE SPECTRUM




SUPPORT IEEE SPECTRUM

IEEE Spectrum is the flagship publication of the IEEE — the world’s largest
professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences. Our
articles, podcasts, and infographics inform our readers about developments in
technology, engineering, and science.
Join IEEE
Subscribe

About IEEEContact & SupportAccessibilityNondiscrimination PolicyTermsIEEE
Privacy PolicyCookie PreferencesAd Privacy Options
© Copyright 2024 IEEE — All rights reserved. A public charity, IEEE is the
world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing
technology for the benefit of humanity.



ENJOY MORE FREE CONTENT AND BENEFITS BY CREATING AN ACCOUNT


SAVING ARTICLES TO READ LATER REQUIRES AN IEEE SPECTRUM ACCOUNT


THE INSTITUTE CONTENT IS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR MEMBERS


DOWNLOADING FULL PDF ISSUES IS EXCLUSIVE FOR IEEE MEMBERS


DOWNLOADING THIS E-BOOK IS EXCLUSIVE FOR IEEE MEMBERS


ACCESS TO SPECTRUM 'S DIGITAL EDITION IS EXCLUSIVE FOR IEEE MEMBERS


FOLLOWING TOPICS IS A FEATURE EXCLUSIVE FOR IEEE MEMBERS


ADDING YOUR RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE REQUIRES AN IEEE SPECTRUM ACCOUNT


CREATE AN ACCOUNT TO ACCESS MORE CONTENT AND FEATURES ON IEEE SPECTRUM ,
INCLUDING THE ABILITY TO SAVE ARTICLES TO READ LATER, DOWNLOAD SPECTRUM
COLLECTIONS, AND PARTICIPATE IN CONVERSATIONS WITH READERS AND EDITORS. FOR MORE
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT AND FEATURES, CONSIDER JOINING IEEE .


JOIN THE WORLD’S LARGEST PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION DEVOTED TO ENGINEERING AND
APPLIED SCIENCES AND GET ACCESS TO ALL OF SPECTRUM’S ARTICLES, ARCHIVES, PDF
DOWNLOADS, AND OTHER BENEFITS. LEARN MORE ABOUT IEEE →


JOIN THE WORLD’S LARGEST PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION DEVOTED TO ENGINEERING AND
APPLIED SCIENCES AND GET ACCESS TO THIS E-BOOK PLUS ALL OF IEEE SPECTRUM’S
ARTICLES, ARCHIVES, PDF DOWNLOADS, AND OTHER BENEFITS. LEARN MORE ABOUT IEEE →

CREATE AN ACCOUNTSIGN IN
JOIN IEEESIGN IN
Close


ACCESS THOUSANDS OF ARTICLES — COMPLETELY FREE


CREATE AN ACCOUNT AND GET EXCLUSIVE CONTENT AND FEATURES: SAVE ARTICLES,
DOWNLOAD COLLECTIONS, AND TALK TO TECH INSIDERS — ALL FREE! FOR FULL ACCESS AND
BENEFITS, JOIN IEEE AS A PAYING MEMBER.

CREATE AN ACCOUNTSIGN IN

TelecommunicationsNews


THE EIGHT-YEAR LEAP SECOND DELAY MIGHT NOT BE AS BAD AS IT SEEMS


THE UTC DECISION HAS BEEN PUT OFF UNTIL 2023, BUT CHANGES MIGHT HAPPEN FAST AT
THAT POINT


Rachel Courtland
02 Dec 2015
3 min read





Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun/AP Photo
internet time leap second gps metrology standards



After I posted a curtain-raiser about the debate over the fate of the leap
second at the World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva last month, I
settled in for a wait. 

The leap second, if you haven’t come across it before, is the stray second that
is added intermittently to atomic-clock–based Coordinated Universal Time
(UTC) to keep it in sync with the unsteady rotation of the Earth.

The question of whether to keep or drop the leap second from UTC has a long and
contentious history, and several people I interviewed said they expected
negotiations to last through most of the four-week-long meeting. 

Instead, “everything was really settled at the end of the second week,” says
Vincent Meens of France’s National Center for Space Studies. And the decision
was to delay the decision: the question was placed on hold until the 2023 World
Radiocommunication Conference, which will be the meeting after the next WRC
meeting.

That might sound like kicking the proverbial can down the road—and especially
bad news for those who think that adding leap seconds threatens modern networks
and systems. But the eight-year delay might not be as bad as it sounds. If the
leap second were dropped this year, there would likely have been a grace period
to allow systems to adjust to the new order; the proposal submitted this year
by the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission, for example, would have
waited until 2022 to make the change to UTC active. 

Meens expects that if a decision is made to eliminate the leap second in 2023,
it would be accompanied by swift action. “The idea is not to wait. So if it’s
decided [to eliminate the leap second] it should be right when the new radio
regulation is put into force. The new time scale would be in the beginning of
2024,” Meens says. So what looks like an eight-year delay right now might only
wind up being a couple of years.







Of course, that outcome will likely depend on what’s done in the meantime (i.e.
a good amount of consensus-building and leg work). There is a long list of
organizations (see paragraph five in that link) that are expected to take part
in studies leading up to WRC-23. And in the midst of all
that, Nature’s Elizabeth Gibney reports, responsibility for the definition of
UTC will be shifting away from the International Telecommunication Union and
toward the international body that already manages International Atomic Time as
well as the SI units of measure. She says the change in responsibility is
unlikely to accelerate the decision.

In fact, says Brian Patten of the U.S. National Telecommunications and
Information Administration, the International Telecommunication Union can’t make
the change by itself. “The ITU cannot alone make a decision about leap seconds,”
he says, as the organization is responsible for distributing the time scale not
making it. As for a speedy resolution in 2023, Patten says it’s too early to
call: “we will have to see what happens in the joint work and discussions,” he
says. “We can’t speculate on what the outcome will be when a report is delivered
to WRC-23 on the status of the work.”

Although Meens predicts swift implementation if the leap second is eliminated,
he can’t predict which way the decision will go. He’s had a role for years in
international deliberations over the leap second, but even he was surprised by
the outcome of this meeting. “I thought this was going to go until the end of
the conference,” Meens says. “This was a particular subject where it was hard to
find gray between white and black.”

He theorizes the decision to delay might have come about in part because the
international participants of the WRC wanted to focus on other difficult
subjects—in particular, the allocation of radio-frequency bands for mobile
devices. It’s hard to imagine we won’t be demanding even more spectrum in eight
years time. But perhaps it will be less of a distraction the next time around. 

The Final Acts (pdf) of the conference are now available (the UTC decision is
in RESOLUTION COM5/1).





internettimeleap secondgpsmetrologystandards

Rachel Courtland

Rachel Courtland, an unabashed astronomy aficionado, is a former senior
associate editor at Spectrum. See full bio →


The Conversation (0)
Publish

Sort byNewestOldestPopular


History of TechnologyMagazineRoboticsInterview


5 QUESTIONS FOR ROBOTICS LEGEND RUZENA BAJCSY

16 hours ago
2 min read

The InstituteIEEE Member NewsCareersProfile


SIGNAL PROCESSING PIONEER’S TECH HAS IMPROVED AUTISM DIAGNOSIS

27 Nov 2024
6 min read

History of TechnologyMagazineFeatureSemiconductors


THE FORGOTTEN STORY OF HOW IBM INVENTED THE AUTOMATED FAB

27 Nov 2024
15 min read
2


RELATED STORIES

TelecommunicationsOpinionJune 2021


FORGET CRYPTOCURRENCIES AND NFTS—SECURING DEVICES IS THE FUTURE OF BLOCKCHAIN
TECHNOLOGY


Consumer ElectronicsNews


WHY THE WAY WE CALCULATE TV ENERGY EFFICIENCY IS WRONG


TelecommunicationsNews


5G JUST GOT WEIRD




Telecommunications Magazine November 2024 Feature Special Reports


STARTUPS SQUEEZE ROOM-SIZE OPTICAL ATOMIC CLOCKS INTO A BRIEFCASE

COMPACT CLOCKS ENABLE GPS WITH CENTIMETER-SCALE ACCURACY


Dina Genkina
15 Oct 2024
15 min read
7



One of the most precise clocks in the world—the optical atomic clock in Boulder,
Colo.—is composed of strontium atoms in a vacuum chamber, with seven different
lasers orchestrated in precise patterns to cool, trap, and detect the atoms.

Matthew Jonas/Boulder Daily Camera
Blue

Walking into Jun Ye’s lab at the University of Colorado Boulder is a bit like
walking into an electronic jungle. There are wires strung across the ceiling
that hang down to the floor. Right in the middle of the room are four hefty
steel tables with metal panels above them extending all the way to the ceiling.
Slide one of the panels to the side and you’ll see a dense mesh of vacuum
chambers, mirrors, magnetic coils, and laser light bouncing around in precisely
orchestrated patterns.

This is one of the world’s most precise and accurate clocks, and it’s so
accurate that you’d have to wait 40 billion years—or three times the age of the
universe—for it to be off by one second.



This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from
Innovation’s Edge.”

What’s interesting about Ye’s atomic clock, part of a joint venture between the
University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST), is that it is optical not microwave, like most atomic clocks.
The ticking heart of the clock is the strontium atom, and it beats at a
frequency of 429 terahertz, or 429 trillion ticks per second. It’s the same
frequency as light in the lower part of the red region of the visible spectrum,
and that relatively high frequency is a pillar of the clock’s incredible
precision. Commonly available atomic clocks beat at frequencies in the gigahertz
range, or about 10 billion ticks per second. Going from the microwave to the
optical makes it possible for Ye’s clock to be tens of thousands of times as
precise.







The startup Vector Atomic uses a vapor of iodine molecules trapped in a small
glass cell as the ticking heart of its optical atomic clock. Will Lunden

One of Ye’s former graduate students, Martin Boyd, cofounded a company called
Vector Atomic, which has taken the idea behind Ye’s optical-clock technology and
used it to make a clock small enough to fit in a box the size of a large
briefcase. The precision of Vector Atomic’s clock is far from that of Ye’s—it
might lose a second in 32 million years, says Jamil Abo-Shaeer, CEO of Vector
Atomic. But it, too, operates at an optical frequency, and it matches or beats
commercial alternatives.

In the past year, three separate companies have developed their own versions of
compact optical atomic clocks—besides Vector Atomic, there’s also Infleqtion, in
Boulder, Colo., and QuantX Labs, based in Adelaide, Australia. Freed from the
laboratory, these new clocks promise greater resilience and a backup to GPS for
military applications, as well as for data centers, financial institutions, and
power grids. And they may enable a future of more-precise GPS, with
centimeter-positioning resolution, exact enough to keep self-driving cars in
their lanes, allow drones to drop deliveries onto balconies, and more.

And even more than all that, this is a story of invention at the frontiers of
electronics and optics. Getting the technology from an unwieldy, lab-size
behemoth to a reliable, portable product took a major shift in mind-set: The
tech staff of these companies, mostly Ph.D. atomic physicists, had to go from
focusing on precision at all costs to obsessing over compactness, robustness,
and minimizing power consumption. They took an idea that pushed the boundaries
of science and turned it into an invention that stretched the possibilities of
technology.


HOW DOES AN ATOMIC CLOCK WORK?

Like any scientist, Ye is motivated by understanding the deepest mysteries of
the universe. He hopes his lab’s ultraprecise clocks will one day help glean the
secrets of quantum gravity, or help understand the nature of dark matter. He
also revels in the engineering complexity of his device.

“I love this job because everything you’re teaching in physics turns out to
matter when you’re trying to measure things at such a high-precision level,” he
says. For example, if someone walks into the lab, the minuscule thermal
radiation emanating from their body will polarize the atoms in the lab ever so
slightly, changing their ticking frequency. To maintain the clock’s precision,
you need to bring that effect under control.

Inside the briefcase-size optical atomic clock. A laser (1) shines into a glass
cell containing atomic vapor (2). The atoms absorb light at only a very precise
frequency. A detector (3) measures the amount of absorption and uses that to
stabilize the laser at the correct frequency. A frequency comb (4) gears down
from the optical oscillation in the terahertz to the microwave range. The clock
outputs an ultraprecise megahertz signal (5). Chris Philpot







In an atomic clock, the atoms act like an extremely picky Goldilocks,
identifying when a frequency of electromagnetic radiation they are exposed to is
too hot, too cold, or just right. The clock starts with a source of
electromagnetic radiation, be it a microwave oscillator (like the current
commercial atomic clocks) or a laser (like Ye’s clock). No matter how precisely
the sources are engineered, they will always have some variation, some
bandwidth, and some jitter, making their frequency irregular and unreliable.

Unlike these radiation sources, all atoms of a certain isotope of a
species—rubidium, cesium, strontium, or any other—are exactly identical to one
another. And any atom has a host of discrete energy levels that it can occupy.
Each pair of energy levels has its own energy gap, corresponding to a frequency.
If an atom is illuminated by radiation of the exact frequency of one such gap,
the atom will absorb the radiation, and the electrons will hop to the higher
energy level. Shortly after, the atom will re-emit radiation as those electrons
hop back down to the lower energy levels.

During clock operation, a maximally stable (but inevitably still somewhat
broadband-jittery) source illuminates the atoms. The electrons get excited and
hop energy levels only when the source’s frequency is just right. A detector
observes how much of the radiation the atoms absorb (or how much they later
re-emitted, depending on the architecture) and reports whether the incoming
frequency is too high or too low. Then, active feedback stabilizes the source’s
frequency to the atoms’ frequency of choice. This precise frequency feeds into a
counter that can count the crests and troughs of the electromagnetic
radiation—the ticks of the atomic clock. That stabilized count is an
ultra-accurate frequency base—a clock, in other words.

There are a plethora of effects that can affect the precision of the clock. If
the atoms are moving, the frequency of radiation from the atoms’ reference point
is altered by the Doppler effect, causing different atoms to select for
different frequencies according to their velocity. External electric or magnetic
fields, or even heat radiating from a human, can tweak the atoms’ preferred
frequency. A vibration can knock a source laser’s frequency so far off that the
atoms will stop responding altogether, breaking the feedback loop.

Ye chose one of the pickiest atoms of them all, one that would offer very high
precision—strontium. To minimize the noisemaking effects of heat, Ye’s team uses
more lasers to cool the atoms down to just shy of absolute zero. To better
detect the atoms’ signal, they corral the atoms in a periodic lattice—a trap
shaped like an egg carton and made by yet another laser. This configuration
creates several separate groups of atoms that can all be compared against one
another to get a more precise measurement. All in all, Ye’s lab uses seven
lasers of different colors for cooling, trapping, preparing the clock state, and
detection, all defined by the atoms’ particular needs.

The lasers enable the clock’s astounding precision, but they are also expensive,
and they take up a lot of space. Aside from the light source itself, each laser
requires a bevy of optical control elements to coax it to the right frequency
and alignment—and they are easily misaligned or knocked slightly away from their
target color.

“The laser is a weak link,” Ye says. “When you design a microwave oscillator,
you put a waveguide around it, and they work forever. Lasers are still very much
more gentle or fragile.” The lasers can be knocked out of alignment by someone
lightly knocking on one of Ye’s massive tables. Waveguides, meanwhile, being
enclosed and bolted down, are much less sensitive.

The lab is run by a team of graduate students and postdocs, bent on ensuring
that the laser’s instabilities do not deter them from making the world’s most
precise measurements. They have the luxury of pursuing the ultimate precision
without concern for worldly practicalities.


THE MIND-SET SHIFT TO A COMMERCIAL PRODUCT

While Ye and his team pursue perfection in timing, Vector Atomic, the first
company to put an optical atomic clock on the market, is after an equally
elusive objective: commercial impact.

“Our competition is not Jun Ye,” says Vector Atomic’s Abo-Shaeer. “Our
competition is the clocks that are out there—it’s the commercial clocks. We’re
trying to bring these more modern timekeeping techniques to bear.”

To be commercially viable, these clocks cannot be thrown off by the bodily heat
of a nearby human, nor can they malfunction when someone knocks against the
device. So Vector Atomic had to rethink the whole construction of its device
from the ground up, and the most fragile part of the system became the company’s
focus. “Instead of designing the system around the atom, we designed the system
around the lasers,” Abo-Shaeer says.

First, they drastically reduced the number of lasers used in the design. That
means no laser cooling—the clock has to work with atoms or molecules in their
gaseous state, confined in a glass cell. And there is no periodic lattice to
group the atoms into separate clumps and get multiple readings. Both of these
choices come with hits to precision, but they were necessary to make robust,
compact devices.

Then, to choose their lasers, Abo-Shaeer and his coworkers asked themselves
which ones were the most robust, cheap, and well-engineered. The answer was
clear—infrared lasers used in mature telecommunications and machining
industries. Then they asked themselves which atom, or molecule, had a transition
that could be stimulated by such a laser. The answer here was an iodine
molecule, whose electrons have a transition at 532 nanometers—conveniently,
exactly half the wavelength of a common industrial laser. Halving the wavelength
could be achieved by means of a common optical device.

“We have all these Ph.D. atomic physicists, and it takes as much or more
creativity to get all this into a box as it did when we were graduate students
with the ultimate goal of writing Nature and Science papers,” Abo-Shaeer says.

Vector Atomic couldn’t get away with just one laser in its system. Having a box
that outputs a very precise laser, oscillating at hundreds of terahertz, sounds
cool but is completely useless. No electronics are capable of counting those
ticks. To convert the optical signal into a friendly microwave one, while
keeping the original signal’s precision, the team needed to incorporate a
frequency comb.

Frequency combs are lasers that emit light in regularly spaced bursts in time.
Their comblike nature becomes apparent if you look at the frequencies—or
colors—of the light they emit, regularly spaced like the teeth of a comb. The
subject of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics, these devices bridge the optical and
microwave domains, allowing laser light to “gear down” to lower frequency range
while preserving precision.

In the past decade, frequency combs underwent their own transformation, from
lab-based devices to briefcase-size commercially available products (and even
quarter-size prototypes). This development, as much as anything else, unleashed
a wave of innovation that enabled the three optical atomic clocks and this
nascent market today.


HIGH TIME FOR OPTICAL TIME

Inventions often happen in a flurry, as if there were something in the air
making conditions ripe for the new innovation. Alongside Vector Atomic’s
Evergreen-30 clock, Infleqtion and QuantX Labs have both developed clocks of
their own in short order. Infleqtion has made seven sales to date of their
clock, Tiqker (yes, quantum-tech companies are morally obligated to put a q in
every name). QuantX Labs, meanwhile, has sold the first two of their Tempo
clocks, with delivery to customers scheduled before the end of this year, says
Andre Luiten, cofounder and managing director of QuantX Labs. (A fourth company,
Vescent, based in Golden, Colo., is also selling an optical atomic clock,
although it is not integrated into a single box.)

Vector Atomic, QuantX Labs, and Infleqtion all have plans to send prototypes of
their clocks into space. QuantX Labs has designed a 20-liter engineering model
of their space clock [left]. QuantX Labs

Independently, all three companies have made surprisingly similar design
choices. They all realized that lasers were the limiting factor, and so chose to
use a glass cell filled with atomic vapor rather than a vacuum chamber and laser
cooling and trapping. They all opted to double the frequency of a telecom laser.
Unlike Vector Atomic, Infleqtion and QuantX Labs chose the rubidium atom. The
energy gap in rubidium, around 780 nm, can be addressed by a frequency-doubled
infrared laser at 1,560 nm. QuantX Labs stands out for using two such lasers,
very close to each other in frequency, to probe through a clever two-tone scheme
that requires less power. They all managed to fit their clock systems into a
30-liter box, roughly the size of a briefcase.

All three companies took great pains to ensure that their clocks will operate
robustly in realistic environments. At the lower level of precision compared
with lab-based optical clocks, the radiation coming from a nearby person is no
longer an issue. However, by doing away with laser cooling, these companies have
heightened the possibility that temperature and motion could affect the atoms’
internal ticking frequency.

“You’ve got to be smart about the way you make the atomic cell so that it’s not
coupled to the environment,” says Luiten.


OPTICAL CLOCKS SET SAIL AND TAKE FLIGHT

In mid-2022, to test the robustness of their design, Vector Atomic and QuantX
Labs’ partners in its venture, the University of Adelaide and Australia’s
Defence Science and Technology Group, took their clocks out to sea. They brought
their clocks to Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, to participate in the Alternative
Position, Navigation and Timing Challenge at Rim of the Pacific, a defense
collaboration among the Five Eyes nations—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the
United Kingdom, and the United States. “They were playing touch rugby with the
New Zealand sailors. So that was an awesome experience for atomic physicists,”
Abo-Shaeer says.

After 20 days aboard a naval ship, Vector Atomic’s optical clocks maintained a
performance that was very close to that of their measurements under lab
conditions. “When it happened, I thought everyone should be standing up and
shouting from the rooftops,” says Jonathan Hoffman, a program manager at the
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which cofunded Vector
Atomic’s work. “People have been working on these optical clocks for decades.
And this was the first time an optical clock ran on its own without human
interference, out in the real world.”



Vector Atomic and QuantX affiliate University of Adelaide installed their
optical atomic clocks on a ship [top] to test their robustness in a harsh
environment. The performance of Vector Atomic’s clocks [bottom] remained
basically unchanged despite the ship’s rocking, temperature swings, and water
sprays. The University of Adelaide’s clock degraded somewhat, but the team used
the trial to improve their design. Will Lunden

The University of Adelaide’s clock did suffer some degradation at sea, but a
critical outcome of the trial was an understanding of why that happened. This
has allowed the team to amend its design to avoid the leading causes of noise,
says Luiten.

In May 2024, Infleqtion sent its Tiqker clock into flight, along with its
atom-based navigation system. A short-haul flight from MoD Boscombe Down, a
military aircraft testing site in the United Kingdom, carried the quantum tech
along with the U.K.’s science minister, Andrew Griffith. The company is still
analyzing data from the flight, but at a minimum the clock has outperformed all
onboard references, according to Judith Olson, head of the atomic clock project
at Infleqtion.

All three companies are working on yet more compact versions of their clocks.
All are confident they will be able to get their briefcase-size boxes down from
a volume of about 30 liters to 5 L, about the size of an old-school two-slice
toaster, say Olson, Luiten, and Abo-Shaeer. “Mostly those boxes are still empty
space,” Luiten says.

During the sea trials, Vector Atomic’s and the University of Adelaide’s clocks
were exposed to the elements. Jon Roslund

Infleqtion also has designs for an even smaller, 100-mL version, which leverages
integrated photonics to make such tight packaging possible. “At that point, you
basically have a clock that can fit in your pocket,” says Olson. “It might make
a very warm pocket after a while, because the power draw will still be high. But
even with the large power draw, that’s something we perceive as being
potentially extremely disruptive.”

All three companies also plan to send their designs into space, aboard
satellites, in the next several years. Under their Kairos mission, QuantX will
launch a component of their Tempo clock into space in 2025, with a full launch
scheduled for 2026.


PRECISION TIMING TODAY

So why would someone need the astounding precision of an optical atomic clock?
The most likely immediate use cases will be in situations where GPS is
unavailable.

When most people think of GPS, they picture that blue dot on a map on their
smartphone. But behind that dot is a sophisticated network of remarkable timing
devices. It starts with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the standard
established by averaging together about 400 atomic clocks of various kinds all
over the world.

“UTC is known to be some factor of 1 million more stable than any astronomical
sense of time provided by Earth’s rotation,” says Jeffrey Sherman, a supervisory
physicist at NIST who works on maintaining and improving UTC clocks.

UTC is transmitted to satellites in the GPS network twice a day. Each satellite
carries an onboard clock of its own, a microwave atomic clock usually based on
rubidium. These clocks are precise to about a nanosecond during that half-day
they are left to their own devices, Sherman says. From there, satellites provide
the time for all kinds of facilities here on Earth, including data centers,
financial institutions, power grids, and cell towers.

Precise timing is what allows the satellites to locate that blue dot on a phone
map, too. A phone must connect to three or more GPS satellites and receive
precise time from all three. However, the times will be different due to the
different distances traveled from the satellites. Using this difference, and
knowing the positions of the satellites, the phone triangulates its own
position. So the precision of timing aboard the satellites directly relates to
how precisely the location of any phone can be determined—currently about 2
meters in the nonmilitary version of the service.


THE PRECISELY TIMED FUTURE

Optical atomic clocks can usefully inject themselves into multiple stages of
this worldwide timing scheme. First, if they prove reliable enough over the long
term, they can be used in defining the UTC standard alongside—and eventually
instead of—other clocks. Currently, the majority of the clocks that make up the
standard are hydrogen masers. Hydrogen masers have a precision similar to that
of the new portable optical clocks, but they are far from portable: They are
roughly the size of a kitchen refrigerator and require a room-size thermally and
vibrationally controlled environment.

“I think everyone can agree the maser is probably at the end of its
technological evolution,” Shermann says. “They’ve stopped really getting a lot
better, while on day one, the first crop of optical clocks are comparable.
There’s a hope that by encouraging development, they can take over, and they can
become much better in the near future.”

The global timing infrastructure. A collection of precise clocks, including
hydrogen masers and atomic clocks, is used to create Coordinated Universal Time
(UTC). A network of satellites carries atomic clocks of their own, synced to UTC
on a regular basis. The satellites then send precise timing to data centers,
financial institutions, the power grid, cell towers, and more. Four or more
satellites are used to determine your phone’s GPS position. An optical atomic
clock can be included in UTC, sent aboard satellites, or used as backup in data
centers, financial institutions, or cell towers. Chris Philpot

Second, optical clocks can come in handy in situations where GPS isn’t
available. Although many people experience GPS as extremely reliable, jammed or
spoofed GPS is very common in times of war or conflict. (To see a daily map of
where GPS is unavailable due to interference, check out gpsjam.org.)

This is a big issue for the U.S. Department of Defense. Not having access to
GPS-based time compromises military communications. “For the DOD, it’s very
important that we can put this on many, many different platforms,” DARPA’s
Hoffman says. “We want to put it on ships, we want to put it on aircraft, we
want to put it on satellites and vehicles.”

It can also be an issue in financial markets, data centers, and 5G
communications. All of these use cases require precise timing to about 1
microsecond to function properly and meet regulatory requirements. That means
the source of timing for these applications must be at least an order of
magnitude better, or roughly a 100-nanosecond resolution. GPS provided this with
room to spare, but if these industries rely solely on GPS, jamming or spoofing
puts them at great risk.

A local microwave atomic clock can provide a backup, but these clocks lose
several nanoseconds a day even in controlled-temperature environments. Optical
atomic clocks can provide these industries with security, so that even if they
lose access to GPS for extended periods of time, their operations will continue
unimpeded.

“By having this headroom in performance, it means that we can trust how well our
clocks are ticking hours and days or even months later,” says Infleqtion’s
Olson. “The lower-performing clocks don’t have that.”

Finally, portable optical atomic clocks open up the possibility of a future
where the entire timing fabric goes from nanosecond to picosecond resolution.
That means sending these clocks into space to form their own version of a
more-precise GPS. Among other things, this would enable location precision
that’s several millimeters instead of 2 meters.

“We call it GPS 2.0,” says Vector Atomic’s Abo-Shaeer. He argues that
millimeter-scale location resolution would allow autonomous vehicles to stay in
their lanes, or make it possible for delivery drones to land on a New York City
balcony.

Perhaps most exciting of all, this invention promises to open the possibility
for many inventions in a variety of fields. Having the option of superior timing
will open new applications that have not yet been envisioned. “A lot of
applications are built around the current limitations of GPS. In other words,
it’s sort of a catch-22,” says David Howe, emeritus and former leader of the
time and frequency metrology group of NIST. “You get into this mode where you
don’t ever cross over to something better because the applications are designed
for what’s available. So, it’ll take a larger vision to say, ‘Let’s see what we
can do with optical clocks.’”

This article appears in the November 2024 print issue as “Squeezing an Optical
Atomic Clock Into a Briefcase.”

From Your Site Articles
 * Entangled Atoms Lead to Ultraprecise Quantum Sensors ›
 * Optical Atomic Clocks Are Ready to Redefine Time ›

Related Articles Around the Web
 * Optical clocks – Physics World ›
 * An elementary quantum network of entangled optical atomic clocks ... ›

Keep Reading ↓ Show less

AI Energy News Transportation Consumer Electronics


TRUMP'S SECOND TERM WILL CHANGE AI, ENERGY, AND MORE

HERE'S YOUR GUIDE TO HOW THE INCOMING ADMINISTRATION WILL IMPACT TECH


IEEE Spectrum

IEEE Spectrum is an award-winning technology magazine and the flagship
publication of the IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization devoted
to engineering and the applied sciences.

27 Nov 2024
5 min read
1

Gluekit

policy artificial intelligence energy transportation cryptocurrency consumer
electronics

U.S. presidential administrations tend to have big impacts on tech around the
world. So it should be taken as a given that when Donald Trump returns to the
White House in January, his second administration will do the same. Perhaps more
than usual, even, as he staffs his cabinet with people closely linked to the
Heritage Foundation, the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank behind
the controversial 900-page Mandate for Leadership (also known as Project 2025).
The incoming administration will affect far more than technology and
engineering, of course, but here at IEEE Spectrum, we’ve dug into how Trump’s
second term is likely to impact those sectors.


Read on to find out more, or click to navigate to a specific topic. This post
will be updated as more information comes in.


 * Artificial Intelligence
 * Consumer Electronics
 * Cryptocurrencies
 * Energy
 * Transportation


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

During Trump’s campaign, he vowed to rescind President Joe Biden’s 2023
executive order on AI, saying in his platform that it “hinders AI Innovation,
and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.”
Experts expect him to follow through on that promise, potentially killing
momentum on many regulatory fronts, such as dealing with AI-generated
misinformation and protecting people from algorithmic discrimination.

However, some of the executive order’s work has already been done; rescinding it
wouldn’t unwrite reports or roll back decisions made by various cabinet
secretaries, such as the Commerce secretary’s establishment of an AI Safety
Institute. While Trump could order his new Commerce secretary to shut down the
institute, some experts think it has enough bipartisan support to survive. “It
develops standards and processes that promote trust and safety—that’s important
for corporate users of AI systems, not just for the public,” says Doug Calidas,
senior vice president of government affairs for the advocacy group Americans for
Responsible Innovation.







As for new initiatives, Trump is expected to encourage the use of AI for
national security. It’s also likely that, in the name of keeping ahead of China,
he’ll expand export restrictions relating to AI technology. Currently, U.S.
semiconductor companies can’t sell their most advanced chips to Chinese firms,
but that rule contains a gaping loophole: Chinese companies need only sign up
for U.S.-based cloud computing services to get their computations done on
state-of-the-art hardware. Trump may close this loophole with restrictions on
Chinese companies’ use of cloud computing. He could even expand export controls
to restrict Chinese firms’ access to foundation models’ weights—the numerical
parameters that define how a machine learning model does its job. —Eliza
Strickland

Back to top


CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

Trump plans to implement hefty tariffs on imported goods, including a 60 percent
tariff on goods from China, 25 percent on those from Canada and Mexico, and a
blanket 10 or 20 percent tariff on all other imports. He’s pledged to do this on
day 1 of his administration, and once implemented, these tariffs would hike
prices on many consumer electronics. According to a report published by the
Consumer Technology Association in late October, the tariffs could induce a 45
percent increase in the consumer price of laptops and tablets, as well as a 40
percent increase for video game consoles, 31 percent for monitors, and 26
percent for smartphones. Collectively, U.S. purchasing power for consumer
technology could drop by US $90 billion annually, the report projects. Tariffs
imposed during the first Trump administration have continued under Biden.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration may take a less aggressive stance on
regulating Big Tech. Under Biden, the Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon
for maintaining monopoly power and Meta for antitrust violations, and worked to
block mergers and acquisitions by Big Tech companies. Trump is expected to
replace the current FTC chair Lina Khan, though it remains unclear how much the
new administration—which bills itself as anti-regulation—will affect the
scrutiny Big Tech is facing. Executives from major companies including Amazon,
Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Intel, and Qualcomm congratulated
Trump on his election on social media, primarily X. (The CTA also issued
congratulations.) —Gwendolyn Rak

Back to top


CRYPTOCURRENCIES

On 6 November, the day the election was called for Trump, Bitcoin jumped 9.5
percent, closing at over US $75,000—a sign that the cryptocurrency world expects
to boom under the next regime. Donald Trump marketed himself as a pro-crypto
candidate, vowing to turn America into the “crypto capital of the planet” at a
Bitcoin conference in July. If he follows through on his promises, Trump could
create a national bitcoin reserve by holding on to bitcoin seized by the U.S.
government. Trump also promised to remove Gary Gensler, the chair of the
Securities and Exchanges Commission, who has pushed to regulate most
cryptocurrencies as securities (like stocks and bonds), with more government
scrutiny.







While it may not be within Trump’s power to remove him, Gensler is likely to
resign when a new administration starts. It is within Trump’s power to select
the new SEC chair, who will likely be much more lenient on cryptocurrencies. The
evidence lies in Trump’s pro-crypto cabinet nominations: Howard Lutnick as
Commerce Secretary, whose finance company oversees the assets of the Tether
stablecoin; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services,
who has said in a post that “Bitcoin is the currency of freedom”; and Tulsi
Gabbard for the Director of National Intelligence, who had holdings in two
cryptocurrencies back in 2018. As Trump put it at that Bitcoin conference, “the
rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.”
—Kohava Mendelsohn

Back to top


ENERGY

Trump’s plans for the energy sector focus on establishing U.S. “energy
dominance,” mainly by boosting domestic oil and gas production, and deregulating
those sectors. To that end, he has selected oil services executive Chris Wright
to lead the U.S. Department of Energy. “Starting on day 1, I will approve new
drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new reactors, and we
will slash the red tape,” Trump said in a campaign speech in Michigan in August.

Trump’s stance on nuclear power, however, is less clear. His first
administration provided billions in loan guarantees for the construction of the
newest Vogtle reactors in Georgia. But in an October interview with podcaster
Joe Rogan, Trump said that large-scale nuclear builds like Vogtle “get too big,
and too complex and too expensive.” Trump periodically shows support for the
development of advanced nuclear technologies, particularly small modular
reactors (SMRs).

As for renewables, Trump plans to “terminate” federal incentives for them. He
vowed to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, a signature law from the Biden
Administration that invests in electric vehicles, batteries, solar and wind
power, clean hydrogen, and other clean energy and climate sectors. Trump
trumpets a particular distaste for offshore wind, which he claims will end “on
day 1” of his next presidency.

The first time Trump ran for president, he vowed to preserve the coal industry,
but this time around, he rarely mentioned it. Coal-fired electricity generation
has steadily declined since 2008, despite Trump’s first-term appointment of a
former coal lobbyist to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. For his next
EPA head, Trump has nominated former New York Representative Lee Zeldin—a play
expected to be central to Trump’s campaign pledges for swift deregulation.
—Emily Waltz

Back to top


TRANSPORTATION

The incoming administration hasn’t laid out too many specifics about
transportation yet, but Project 2025 has lots to say on the subject. It
recommends the elimination of federal transit funding, including programs
administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). This would severely
impact local transit systems—for instance, the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority in New York City could lose nearly 20 percent of its capital funding,
potentially leading to fare hikes, service cuts, and project delays. Kevin
DeGood, Director of Infrastructure Policy at the Center for American Progress,
warns that “taking away capital or operational subsidies to transit providers
would very quickly begin to result in systems breaking down and becoming
unreliable.” DeGood also highlights the risk to the FTA’s Capital Investment
Grants, which fund transit expansion projects such as rail and bus rapid
transit. Without this support, transit systems would struggle to meet the needs
of a growing population.

Project 2025 also proposes spinning off certain Federal Aviation Administration
functions into a government-sponsored corporation. DeGood acknowledges that
privatization can be effective if well-structured, and he cautions against
assuming that privatization inherently leads to weaker oversight. “It’s wrong to
assume that government control means strong oversight and privatization means
lax oversight,” he says.

Project 2025’s deregulatory agenda also includes rescinding federal fuel-economy
standards and halting initiatives like Vision Zero, which aims to reduce traffic
fatalities. Additionally, funding for programs designed to connect underserved
communities to jobs and services would be cut. Critics, including researchers
from Berkeley Law, argue that these measures prioritize cost-cutting over
long-term resilience.

Trump has also announced plans to end the US $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an
electric vehicle. —Willie D. Jones

Back to top

From Your Site Articles
 * Trump CTO Addresses AI, Facial Recognition, Immigration, Tech Infrastructure,
   and More ›
 * Can Joe Biden Deliver a Sci-Tech Renaissance? ›

Related Articles Around the Web
 * Project 2025 Publishes Comprehensive Policy Guide, 'Mandate for ... ›

Keep Reading ↓ Show less

Telecommunications Sensors Climate Tech Climate Change Sponsored Article


THIS STARTUP IS BUILDING THE INTERNET OF UNDERWATER THINGS

WSENSE’S INNOVATIVE NETWORKING SYSTEMS ARE TRANSFORMING HOW WE EXPLORE OCEAN
ENVIRONMENTS


LEMO

LEMO is a global manufacturer of custom precision connection and cable
solutions. Based in Écublens, Switzerland, the company is known for its
push-pull connectors used in medical, industrial, audio/visual,
telecommunications, military, and research applications.

06 Sep 2023
6 min read
3


Italian startup WSense develops software and hardware for underwater data
collection and communication.

WSense


This is a sponsored article brought to you by LEMO.

Science thrives on data. As such, the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT)
brought about a fantastic revolution. Billions of “intelligent objects” packed
with sensors are connected to each other and to servers, capturing and
exchanging, in real time, huge amounts of data. Analyzed, accessible, and
shareable worldwide, these data enable researchers to observe and understand our
planet like never before.



Well, not all of our planet: IoT does not connect us to seas and oceans.

This blind spot is rather striking. Water covers 72 percent of the Earth’s
surface, its volumes host 80 percent of biodiversity and play a pivotal role in
global phenomena, such as climate change. It is impossible to claim a global
vision without integrating the oceans.


PIONEERING UNDERWATER NETWORK TECHNOLOGY

There are a few marine research stations scattered around the globe (like
needles in algal stacks). An increasing number of intelligent marine objects
have also been created (sensors, buoys, autonomous vehicles, probes). The
foundations of an underwater wireless network are also being set up, which
should be as accessible and reliable as the IoT, the Internet of Underwater
Things (IoUT). A pioneer in the field, Italian company WSense has had favorable
currents this year.

The adventure of the startup began at the University of Sapienza in Rome, where
Professor Chiara Petrioli is in charge of a research laboratory. “We started
looking into underwater networks 10 years ago,” she says. “We wanted to find a
way to transmit information reliably with elements like routers in large areas.”
This research resulted in solutions “achieving levels of reliability and
performance previously not possible” and several international patents were
filed. Potential applications supported the creation of a spin-off: WSense
launched in 2017 with a handful of PhDs and engineers with backgrounds in
acoustics, network architecture, signal processing, among other areas.

Today, the startup employs a staff of 50 people with offices located in Italy,
U.K., and Norway. It has about 20 customers — “Blue economy” companies and
scientific institutions. Its innovations have been honored in 2022 by a Digital
Challenge of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and by a
Blueinvest prize from the European Commission.


HOW WSENSE IS HELPING PROTECT ITALY'S UNDERWATER ARCHEOLOGICAL TREASURES


DEPLOYING ACOUSTICS, OPTICAL SYSTEMS, AND AI

As you can imagine, “wireless network” and “underwater” are not made for each
other. In fact, anything that makes aerial Wi-Fi function does not work
underwater. Radio waves are significantly attenuated, light or sound
communication vary a lot depending on the temperature, salinity level,
background noise — everything had to be reconsidered and that’s exactly what
WSense has done.

Their solution is based on an innovative combination of acoustic communication
for medium-range distances and optical LED technologies for short distances,
with a hint of artificial intelligence.

More specifically, underwater “nodes” are deployed. Data transfer between the
nodes is permanently optimized by AI: Whenever sea conditions change, algorithms
modify the path followed by byte packets.

The system, explains Petrioli, can send data to 1000 meters at the speed of 1
kbit/s and up to several Mbit/s over shorter distances. This bandwidth can’t be
compared to those of aerial networks “but we are working on enlarging it.”
However, it is sufficient for transmitting environmental data collected by the
sensors.

“We are in the process of developing autonomous robotic systems. We can allow
teams of robots to communicate and collaborate, to send data, get instructions,
and change their mission in real time.” —Chiara Petrioli, WSense Founder & CEO

The resulting network is stable, reliable, and open: A plurality of devices
(sensors, probes, vehicles) of various types and brands can be connected. WSense
has designed its platform first for shallow water (up to 300 m depth), but now
it asserts that it is operational up to -3000 m, opening the door wider to the
oceans.

On the surface, floating gateways (or posted on nearby land) connect this local
network to the cloud, and so to the rest of the world — the IoUT joins IoT.

WSense designs all the software in-house (from network software to data
processing) as well as all the necessary hardware: nodes, probes, modems, and
gateways.

WSense’s devices are packed with sensors. “They measure parameters such as
temperature, salinity, pH, chlorophyll, methane, ammonium, phosphate, CO2, waves
and tide, background noise,” explains Petrioli. In a nutshell: everything
required for real-time follow-up and extensive surveillance of submarine
environments.

Aquaculture was one of the first sectors to show an interest in WSense (and
remains a sector with key customers). The deployment of a wireless network
covering the rearing cages, without multiple bulky cabling, connects everything
that provides for monitoring the biotope and controlling the fish farm. Cameras
and sensors, as well as robots.

“We are in the process of developing autonomous robotic systems,” says Petrioli.
“We can allow teams of robots to communicate and collaborate, to send data, get
instructions, and change their mission in real time.”


STUDYING HOW ANIMALS ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Following a request from a Norwegian customer, WSense R&D has recently developed
an ultra-miniature fish wearable element. It makes it possible to closely
observe the life and health of animals, while monitoring water quality. “All
this goes in the same direction: supplying tools to go further in the direction
of a more sustainable fish farming,” Petrioli says.

Similarly, WSense’s platform can make it considerably easier to survey and work
around offshore stations, as well as underwater infrastructure, such as gas and
oil pipelines.


AN OUT-OF-THE-BOX DIVING EXPERIENCE

This summer, WSense launched a miniature device: a “micronode” that could
considerably enhance our submarine diving experience, just like smartphone
applications have contributed to enriching our daily lives.

The size of a pack of cigarettes, the device is linked by cable (and LEMO W
Series connectors) to a watertight tablet. Thanks to the solution, divers can
communicate with the surface and among each other much better than by sign
language.

“It also makes it possible for them to receive real-time information about what
they see around themselves”, explains WSense founder and CEO Chiara Petrioli.
For the submerged Roman ruins of Baiae for instance, the tablet could show, in
augmented reality, the reconstituted buildings visited by “diving tourists”.

In addition, the “micronode” is equipped with a GPS, “which increases safety,
since the divers will always be precisely located. This option also opens new
ways of exploring archaeological sites. It will be possible, for instance, to
guide visitors along predefined itineraries,” Petroli says. “There are endless
possibilities !”

The new device adds interactivity, augmented reality, and much more for the
divers.

This new product has been presented during the finish of the prestigious “Ocean
Race” (a round-the-world sailing challenge) which was held in late June in Genoa
(Italy).

It is just as efficient in more natural environments. The startup has deployed
its network in sensitive sites and environmental hotspots. Scientists use it for
instance for studying how algae, corals, and animals adapt to climate change. In
the field and continuously, “which is much more precise than what we could do
from the surface or satellites,” according to Petrioli. The solution also
monitors sites that represent major risks for human populations, such as
volcanic areas.

The WSense platform is also deployed in archeological or cultural sites, such as
the submerged luxurious Roman city of Baiae, near Naples (Italy), which is part
of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. By measuring pollution and the effects of
climate change or potential damage caused by visitors, it contributes to their
protection the same way as it has for a long time in the case of on-land
archaeological sites.

Just like webcams placed around the world, “those connected by WSense can also
promote these sites.” They open windows for education and tourism, providing
access to a larger audience than that of just scientists, companies, or
authorities.



DEFINING THE STANDARD FOR IOUT

The startup is also about to launch a “micronode” that, connected to a
watertight tablet, would enhance the diving experience. This new appealing
product does not really embody WSense’s true ambitions. The Italian company does
not only offer, unlike others, “smart devices.” It doesn’t want to be just one
more component in our already too fragmented knowledge of oceans.

On the contrary, it wants to unite all the components.

With this in mind, WSense has ensured the interoperability of its submarine
network. For the same reason, it has also been working hard on making deployment
simple and reducing costs, both prerequisites for its true purpose: to define
the standard for IoUT.

Underwater wireless networks give continuous access to an unprecedented wealth
of data about our oceans

For this purpose, WSense must enhance its notoriety as well as its platform. In
January, it got a great boost from a place that hasn’t seen any oceans for the
last 200 million years: Davos, in the heart of the Swiss Alps.

During its last edition, the prestigious World Economic Forum (WEF) rewarded 10
companies, including WSense, winner of its Ocean Data Challenge, an event for
identifying the most promising technologies in data collection and management
for ocean protection. The award gives access to the WEF network, an ideal
platform for finding people who could give support for global scale up.

There was an immediate effect: WSense spent the following weeks answering a
flood of inquiries.

“It was huge,” says Petrioli. “We were able to talk to political and scientific
leaders, top managers, who were often unaware of the possibilities. We could
explain to them that the Internet of Underwater Things was not deep tech, but a
solution ready to be implemented.”

Quick positioning on the submarine communications market is quite interesting
(Forbes estimated it at $3.5 billion dollars, with a 22 percent increase per
year). However, urgency lies elsewhere, insists Petrioli.

“We cannot delay applying these solutions. We must not go on ignoring so many
things about the exploitation of the oceans or climate change. We must
understand today, because it may be too late tomorrow.”

From Your Site Articles
 * MIT Makes Low-Power Underwater Communication Practical - IEEE Spectrum ›
 * Cheap Underwater Acoustic Communication Is Now Possible - IEEE Spectrum ›

Related Articles Around the Web
 * Wsense – Underwater Wireless Communication for Blue Econom ›
 * WSENSE | LinkedIn ›
 * Contribution: Building the internet of things underwater to provide ... ›

Keep Reading ↓ Show less

Telecommunications Whitepaper


EM SIMULATIONS IN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY


HOW SCENARIOS TYPICAL TO THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY CAN BE SUCCESSFULLY ANALYZED
USING WIPL-D EM SIMULATION SOFTWARE SUITE


WIPL-D
WIPL-D develops commercial EM simulation software and provides consulting
services in the field of electromagnetism. Established in 2002, the company is
headquartered in Belgrade, Serbia.
19 Nov 2024
1 min read
1


This whitepaper shows how electromagnetic simulations can be applied to various
scenarios in the automotive industry. The scenarios encompassed 77 GHz
anti-collision radar mounted on a car bumper, an EM obstacle detection also at
77 GHz, a radar antenna mounted on a car bumper operating at 24 GHz and 40 GHz,
and vehicle-to-vehicle communication at 5.9 GHz.

It is shown that the rapid increase of requirements for efficient EM simulations
in automotive applications could be addressed successfully by applying several
sophisticated techniques in WIPL-D 3D full-wave simulation software.


Transportation AI News


AI DASH CAMS GIVE WAKE-UP CALLS TO DROWSY DRIVERS

INNOVATIVE TECH DETECTS DRIVER FATIGUE AND SIGNALS THEM TO TAKE A BREAK


Willie D. Jones

Willie Jones is an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum. In addition to editing and
planning daily coverage, he manages several of Spectrum's newsletters and
contributes regularly to the monthly Big Picture section that appears in the
print edition.

26 Nov 2024
5 min read



AI-powered dash cams could detect when a commercial driver is weary and prompt
them to pull over.

Samsara

artificial intelligence driving advanced driver assistance systems monitoring

Increasingly, vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems are looking not
only at the road but also at the driver. And for good reason. These systems can,
paradoxically, make driving less safe as drivers engage in more risky behaviors
behind the wheel under the mistaken belief that electronic equipment will
compensate for lack of caution.

Attempting to ward off such misuse, automakers have for years used camera-based
systems to monitor the driver’s eye movement, posture, breathing, and hand
placement for signs of inattention. Those metrics are compared with baseline
data gathered during trips with drivers who were fully alert and focused on the
road. The point is to make sure that drivers appear alert and ready to take
control of the driving task if the suite of electronic sensors and actuators
gets overwhelmed or misjudges a situation.



Now, several companies targeting commercial vehicle fleet operators, especially
long-haul trucking companies, are introducing AI-enabled dashcam technology that
takes driver monitoring a step further. These new dash cams use machine learning
to pick up on the subtle behavioral cues that are signs of drowsiness.
“Long-haul truckers are particularly at risk of driving drowsy because they
often work long hours and drive lengthy routes,” says Evan Welbourne, Vice
president for AI and Data at Samsara, which recently introduced its drowsiness
detection solution.

The driver monitoring tech developed by Samsara and Motive, both based in and
San Francisco, and Nauto, headquartered in nearby Sunnyvale, Calif., deliver
real-time audio alerts to a drowsy driver, giving them a prompt to take a break
to reduce the risk of a fatigue-related accident. All are configured so that if
a dash cam detects that a driver continues to operate the vehicle while
displaying signs of drowsiness after the in-cab alert, it can directly contact
fleet managers so they can coach the driver and reinforce safety measures.







Each of the systems is trained to pick up on different combinations of signs
that a driver is drowsy. For example, Motive’s AI, introduced in July 2024,
tracks yawning and head movement. “Excessive” yawning and head posture
indicating that the driver’s has taken their gaze away from the roadway for five
seconds triggers an alert.

Nauto’s drowsiness detection feature, introduced in November 2021, tracks an
individual driver’s behavior over time, tracking yawning and other indicators
such as blink duration and frequency and changes in the driver’s overall body
posture. Nauto’s AI is trained so that when these signs of drowsiness accumulate
to a level associated with unacceptable risk, it issues an alert to the driver.

Samsara’s driver monitoring tech triggers an audio alert to the driver when it
detects a combination of more than a dozen drowsiness symptoms, including
prolonged eye closure, head nodding, yawning, rubbing eyes, and slouching, which
are telltale signs that the driver is dozing off.


IMPROVING DETECTORS’ EFFECTIVENESS

According to the Foundation for Traffic Safety, 17 percent of all fatal crashes
involve a drowsy driver. The earliest generation of driver monitoring
techaccounted for only one or two signs that a driver might be drifting off to
sleep. Driver-monitoring developments such as the Percentage of Eyelid Closure
Over Time (PERCLOS) methodology for measuring driver drowsiness, introduced by
the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the
mid-1990s, gave system developers a direct physiological indicator to home in
on. “But drowsiness is more than a single behavior, like yawning or having your
eyes closed,” says Samsara’s Welbourne.

Welbourne notes that the new generation of drowsiness-detection tools are based
on the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS). He explains that “KSS is a nine-point
scale for making an assessment based on as many as 17 behaviors including
yawning, facial contortions, and sudden jerks” that happen when they are jerking
back awake after a brief interval during which they have fallen asleep. “The KSS
score accounts for all of them and gives us a quantitative way to assess
holistically, Is this person drowsy?”

Stefan Heck, Nauto’s CEO, says his company’s Ai is tuned to intervene at
Karolinska Level 6. “We let the very early signs of drowsiness go because people
find it annoying if tou alert too much. At Level 1 or 2, a person won’t be aware
that they’re drowsy yet, so alerts at those levels would just come across as a
nuisance.” By the time their drowsiness reaches Level 5 or 6, Heck says, they’re
starting to be dangerous because they exhibit long periods of inattention. “And
at that point, they know they’re drowsy, so the alert won’t come as a surprise
to them.







Samsara’s Welbourne asserts that his company has good reason to be confident
that its AI models are solid and will avoid false positives or false negatives
that would diminish the tool’s usefulness to drivers and fleet operators.
“Accurate detection is only as good as the data that feeds and trains AI
models,” he notes.

With that in mind, the Samsara AI team trained a machine learning model to
predict the Karolinska Sleep Score associated with a driver’s behavior using
more than 180 billion minutes of video footage (depicting 220 billion miles
traveled). The footage came from the dash cams in its customers’ fleet vehicles.
A big challenge, Welbourne recalls, was spotting incidences of behaviors linked
to drowsiness amid that mountain of data. “It’s kind of rare, so, getting enough
examples to train a big model requires poring over an enormous amount of data.”
Just as challenging, he says, was creating labels for all that data, “and
through several iterations, coming up with a model aligned with the clinical
definition of drowsiness.”

That painstaking effort has already begun to pay dividends in the short time
since Samsara made the drowsiness-detection feature available in its dash cams
this past October. According to Welbourne, Samsara has found that the focus on
multiple signs of drowsiness was indeed a good idea. More than three-fourths of
the drowsy driving events to which it has been alerted by dash cams since
October were detected by behaviors other than yawning alone. And he shares an
anecdote about an oilfield services company that uses Samsara dash cams in its
vehicles. The firm, which had previously experienced two drowsy driver events a
week on average, went the entire first month after drivers started getting
drowsiness alerts without any such events occurring.

To drivers concerned that the introduction of this technology foreshadows a
further erosion of privacy, Samsara says that its driver-monitoring feature is
intended strictly for use within commercial vehicle fleets and that it has no
intention of seeking mass adoption in consumer vehicles. Maybe so, but
drowsiness detection is already being incorporated as a standard safety feature
in a growing number of passenger cars. Automakers such as Ford, Honda, Toyota,
and Daimler-Benz have vehicles in their respective lineups that deliver audible
and/or visual alert signals encouraging distracted or drowsy drivers to take a
break. And it’s possible that government agencies like NHTSA will eventually
mandate the technology’s use in all vehicles equipped with ADAS systems that
give them Level 2 or Level 3 autonomy.

Those concerns notwithstanding, drowsiness-detection and other driver-monitoring
technologies have been generally well received by fleet vehicle drivers so far.
Truck drivers are mostly amenable to having dash cams aboard when they’re behind
the wheel. When accidents occur, dash cams can exonerate drivers blamed for
collisions they didn’t cause, saving them and freight companies a ton of money
in liability claims. Now, systems capable of monitoring what’s going on inside
the cab will keep the subset of drivers most likely to fall asleep at the
wheel—those hauling loads at night, driving after a bout of physical exertion,
or affected by an undiagnosed medical condition—from putting themselves and
others in danger.

From Your Site Articles
 * The Next Generation of AI-Enabled Cars Will Understand You ›
 * Seatbelt Sensors to Fight Drowsy Driving ›

Related Articles Around the Web
 * A contextual and temporal algorithm for driver drowsiness detection ... ›
 * Driver drowsiness detection - Wikipedia ›

Keep Reading ↓ Show less
{"imageShortcodeIds":[]}



GET THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY NEWS IN YOUR INBOX

Subscribe to IEEE Spectrum’s newsletters by selecting from the list.
Tech Alert
AI Alert
Climate Tech Alert
Career Alert
Robotics News
The Future Lane
University Spotlight
Product Spotlight
Email input
I agree to the IEEE Privacy Policy
Please select one or more newsletters, enter a valid email address and accept
Privacy Policy
Subscribe

Close


YOU HAVE SUCCESFULLY SUBSCRIBED TO THE NEWSLETTERS BELOW:


THANK YOUR FOR YOUR SUBSCRIPTION.


Telecommunications Magazine Feature Top Tech 2024 Computing Special Reports
January 2024


WI-FI 7 SIGNALS THE INDUSTRY’S NEW PRIORITY: STABILITY

MULTI-LINK OPERATIONS AND THE 6-GHZ BAND PROMISE MORE RELIABILITY THAN BEFORE


Michael Koziol
29 Dec 2023
4 min read
14


Giacomo Bagnara
Blue

Wi-Fi is one of the most aggravating success stories. Despite how ubiquitous the
technology has become in our lives, it still gives reasons to grumble: The
service is spotty or slow, for example, or the network keeps cutting out.
Wi-Fi’s reliability has an image problem.

When Wi-Fi 7 arrives this year, it will bring with it a new focus on improving
its image. Every Wi-Fi generation brings new features and areas of focus,
usually related to throughput—getting more bits from point A to point B. The new
features in Wi-Fi 7 will result in a generation of wireless technology that is
more focused on reliability and reduced latency, while still finding new ways to
continue increasing data rates.



This article is part of our special report Top Tech 2024.

“The question that we posed ourselves was, ‘What do we do now?’” says Carlos
Cordeiro, an Intel fellow and the company’s chief technology officer of wireless
connectivity. “What Wi-Fi really needed to do at that point was become more
reliable…. I think it’s the time that we should be looking more at latency and
becoming more deterministic.”

The renewed focus on reliability is motivated by emerging applications. Imagine
a wireless factory robot in a situation where a worker suddenly steps in front
of it and the robot needs to make an immediate decision. “It’s not so much about
throughput, but you really want to make sure that your [data] packet gets across
the first time that you send it,” says Cordeiro. Beyond industrial automation
and robotics, augmented and virtual reality technologies as well as gaming stand
to benefit from faster, more reliable wireless signals.








MULTI-LINK OPERATIONS WILL MAKE WI-FI MORE RELIABLE

The key to a future Wi-Fi you can depend on is something called multi-link
operations (MLO). “It is the marquee feature of Wi-Fi 7,” says Kevin Robinson,
president and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. MLO comes in two flavors. The first—and
simpler—of the two is a version that allows Wi-Fi devices to spread a stream of
data across multiple channels in a single frequency band. The technique makes
the collective Wi-Fi signal more resilient to interference at a specific
frequency.

Where MLO really makes Wi-Fi 7 stand apart from previous generations, however,
is a version that allows devices to spread a data stream across multiple
frequency bands. For context, Wi-Fi utilizes three bands—2.5 gigahertz, 5 GHz,
and as of 2020, 6 GHz.

Whether MLO spreads signals across multiple channels in the same frequency band
or channels across two or three bands, the goals are the same: dependability and
reduced latency. Devices will be able to split up a stream of data and send
portions across different channels at the same time—which cuts down on the
overall transmission time—or beam copies of the data across diverse channels, in
case one channel is noisy or otherwise impaired.

“[Multi-link operations are] the marquee feature of Wi-Fi 7.” —Kevin Robinson,
president and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance

MLO is hardly the only feature new to Wi-Fi 7, even if industry experts agree
it’s the most notable. Wi-Fi 7 will also see channel size increase from 160
megahertz to a new maximum of 320 MHz. Bigger channels means more throughput
capacity, which means more data in the same amount of time. That said, 320-MHz
channels won’t be universally available. Wi-Fi uses unlicensed spectrum—and in
some regions, contiguous 320-MHz chunks of unlicensed spectrum don’t exist
because of other spectrum allocations.

In cases where full channels aren’t possible, Wi-Fi 7 includes another feature,
called puncturing. “In the past, let’s say you’re looking for 320 MHz somewhere,
but right within, there’s a 20-MHz interferer. You would need to look at going
to either side of that,” says Andy Davidson, senior director of technology
planning at Qualcomm. Before Wi-Fi 7, you’d functionally be stuck with about a
160-MHz channel either above or below that interference. “With Wi-Fi 7, you can
just notch out the interference…. You’ve still got an effective 300-MHz
channel,” says Davidson.


WHEN DO I GET MY WI-FI 7?

The closest thing that a Wi-Fi generation has to a “release date” is when the
Wi-Fi Alliance releases its certification, which is a process for ensuring that
wireless products meet the industry’s agreed-upon standards for security,
interoperability, and device protocols. Wi-Fi Certified 7—slated for the first
quarter of 2024—is the culmination of years of collaborative work by the
wireless industry to determine what features should be included in the new
generation. After agreement on features, there is months of validation work on
early implementations of those features to ensure they all work, separately and
together, according to Robinson. Early Wi-Fi 7 implementations are tested at the
organization’s R&D lab in Santa Clara, Calif. Finally, the new features are
locked in and the Wi-Fi Alliance releases its certification program.







Separate from the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification process, the IEEE will ratify a
new version of the 802.11 standard. The two are not entirely equivalent—not
everything specified in the standard makes it into the Wi-Fi Alliance
certification. Regardless, the new version—802.11be—should be ratified later
this year as well, after the Wi-Fi 7 certification release.

When Wi-Fi Certified 7 is released, manufacturers will bring their devices to
one of 20 authorized test labs around the world to confirm that their devices
conform to the specs laid out by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Most importantly, certified
devices are guaranteed to work together properly.

Wi-Fi 7 routers, chips, and other devices are already available, ahead of Wi-Fi
Certified 7’s release. This is standard practice: Companies release their Wi-Fi
7–compatible products and undergo the official certification when it becomes
available. Qualcomm’s Davidson explains that it’s common for companies to work
from earlier IEEE draft standards once it becomes clear what features and
requirements the next wireless generation will include.

Meanwhile, work is already underway on what will become Wi-Fi 8. “Think of it as
a pipeline,” says Robinson. “While the Wi-Fi Alliance is putting the finishing
touches on commercializing a new generation of Wi-Fi, standards organizations
like the IEEE are already looking forward to what is going to go into the next
generation.”

This article appears in the January 2024 print issue as “Wi-Fi’s Big Bet on
Reliability.”

From Your Site Articles
 * Wi-Fi 7 Stomps on the Gas ›
 * What Is Wi-Fi 7? ›
 * Low-Power Wi-Fi Extends Signals up to 3 Kilometers - IEEE Spectrum ›
 * Qualcomm’s Newest Chip Brings AI to Wi-Fi - IEEE Spectrum ›

Related Articles Around the Web
 * IEEE 802.11be - Wikipedia ›

Keep Reading ↓ Show less

Consumer Electronics News


THIS “LOLLIPOP” BRINGS TASTE TO VIRTUAL REALITY

LICKABLE DEVICES COULD MAKE FOR FLAVORFUL EXTENDED-REALITY ENVIRONMENTS


Gwendolyn Rak

Gwendolyn Rak is an assistant editor at IEEE Spectrum covering consumer
electronics and careers. She holds a master’s degree in science journalism from
New York University and a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics and history from
Swarthmore College.

25 Nov 2024
3 min read
1


Future extended reality environments could include tastes and smells, courtesy
of devices like lickable “lollipops.”

Liu et al./PNAS

virtual reality interfaces taste extended reality

Virtual- and augmented-reality setups already modify the way users see and hear
the world around them. Add in haptic feedback for a sense of touch and a VR
version of Smell-O-Vision, and only one major sense remains: taste.

To fill the gap, researchers at the City University of Hong Kong have developed
a new interface to simulate taste in virtual and other extended reality (XR).
The group previously worked on other systems for wearable interfaces, such as
haptic and olfactory feedback. To create a more “immersive VR experience,” they
turned to adding taste sensations, says Yiming Liu, a coauthor of the group’s
research paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.



The lollipop-shaped lickable device can produce nine different flavors: sugar,
salt, citric acid, cherry, passion fruit, green tea, milk, durian, and
grapefruit. Each flavor is produced by food-grade chemicals embedded in a pocket
of agarose gel. When a voltage is applied to the gel, the chemicals are
transported to the surface in a liquid that then mixes with saliva on the tongue
like a real lollipop. Increase the voltage, and get a stronger flavor.

Initially, the researchers tested several methods for simulating taste,
including electrostimulating the tongue. The other methods each came with
limitations, such as being too bulky or less safe, so the researchers opted for
chemical delivery through a process called iontophoresis, which moves chemicals
and ions through hydrogels and has a low electrical-power requirement. With a
2-volt maximum, the device is well within the human safety limit of 30 V, which
is considered enough to deliver a substantial shock in some situations.







Delivering the chemical stimuli of taste and smell is one of the main challenges
for XR systems, says Alessandro Tonacci, a biomedical engineer for Italy’s
National Research Council, who chairs the IEEE Consumer Systems for Healthcare
and Wellbeing technical committee. XR systems “are capable of providing feedback
consisting of physical stimulations (sight, touch, hearing), but, due to
technological constraints, still fail when dealing with chemical stimuli,”
Tonacci says.

The researchers’ approach has been prototyped by others, but they have made the
technology more usable by improving the taste quality and consistency, and
providing a portable, user-friendly interface, Tonacci says. At this point, he
adds, the major challenge will be user acceptance.


A TASTE FOR VR

The researchers imagine three possible uses for “tasteful” extended reality:
standardized gustation tests, similar to a hearing or vision test; online
shopping in virtual grocery stores; and mixed-reality environments where, for
example, a child could explore the flavors of different foods.

To further enhance the taste experience in these scenarios, the researchers drew
on the strong connection between smell and taste by adding an olfactory
component. In addition to the taste generating gels, they added seven channels
for odors.

Motion sensors are used to pair the lollipop’s location in the virtual and
physical worlds, creating a more immersive experience. Liu et al./PNAS

For better usability, it’s also important for the device to be small and
portable. The researchers used ultrathin printed circuit boards and a 3D-printed
nylon exterior to keep the weight down. Once loaded with all nine gels, the
lollipop weighs about 15 grams—about the same as a Tootsie Pop. (The researchers
also tested versions with fewer gels, which allows for a greater volume of each
gel and therefore more intense flavor. The trade-off is between intensity and
complexity of possible flavors.)

One of the major limitations of the current interface is that it can be used for
only one hour before the chemical-infused gels effectively run out. The gels
continuously shrink during use, so after an hour, the flavor-generation rate
will be extremely low and the gel should be replaced, says Liu.

Going forward, the research group plans to further develop the system to address
the short operation time, as well as the limited number of flavor channels and
constraints on how it is used. In other words, consider this just a taste of XR
interfaces to come.

From Your Site Articles
 * VR System Hacks Your Nose to Turn Smells Into Temperatures ›
 * Virtual-Reality Scent System Fools Flavor Sense ›

Related Articles Around the Web
 * VR / AR Fundamentals — 3) Other Senses (Touch, Smell, Taste ... ›
 * VR: When Will We Get Taste, Touch, and Smell? ›

Keep Reading ↓ Show less
{"imageShortcodeIds":[]}

Telecommunications Engineering Resources COMSOL Resource Library Sponsored
Article


DESIGNING A SILICON PHOTONIC MEMS PHASE SHIFTER WITH SIMULATION

ENGINEERS AT EPFL USED SIMULATION TO DESIGN PHOTONIC DEVICES FOR ENHANCED
OPTICAL NETWORK SPEED, CAPACITY, AND RELIABILITY


Alan Petrillo
16 Jan 2023
4 min read
2

EPFL


This sponsored article is brought to you by COMSOL.

The modern internet-connected world is often described as wired, but most core
network data traffic is actually carried by optical fiber — not electric wires.
Despite this, existing infrastructure still relies on many electrical signal
processing components embedded inside fiber optic networks. Replacing these
components with photonic devices could boost network speed, capacity, and
reliability. To help realize the potential of this emerging technology, a
multinational team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)
has developed a prototype of a silicon photonic phase shifter, a device that
could become an essential building block for the next generation of optical
fiber data networks.




LIGHTING A PATH TOWARD ALL-OPTICAL NETWORKS

Using photonic devices to process photonic signals seems logical, so why is this
approach not already the norm? “A very good question, but actually a tricky one
to answer!” says Hamed Sattari, an engineer currently at the Swiss Center for
Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) specializing in photonic integrated
circuits (PIC) with a focus on microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology.
Sattari was a key member of the EPFL photonics team that developed the silicon
photonic phase shifter. In pursuing a MEMS-based approach to optical signal
processing, Sattari and his colleagues are taking advantage of new and emerging
fabrication technology. “Even ten years ago, we were not able to reliably
produce integrated movable structures for use in these devices,” Sattari says.
“Now, silicon photonics and MEMS are becoming more achievable with the current
manufacturing capabilities of the microelectronics industry. Our goal is to
demonstrate how these capabilities can be used to transform optical fiber
network infrastructure.”

Optical fiber networks, which make up the backbone of the internet, rely on many
electrical signal processing devices. Nanoscale silicon photonic network
components, such as phase shifters, could boost optical network speed, capacity,
and reliability.

The phase shifter design project is part of EPFL’s broader efforts to develop
programmable photonic components for fiber optic data networks and space
applications. These devices include switches; chip-to-fiber grating couplers;
variable optical attenuators (VOAs); and phase shifters, which modulate optical
signals. “Existing optical phase shifters for this application tend to be bulky,
or they suffer from signal loss,” Sattari says. “Our priority is to create a
smaller phase shifter with lower loss, and to make it scalable for use in many
network applications. MEMS actuation of movable waveguides could modulate an
optical signal with low power consumption in a small footprint,” he explains.


HOW A MOVABLE WAVEGUIDE HELPS MODULATE OPTICAL SIGNALS

The MEMS phase shifter is a sophisticated mechanism with a deceptively
simple-sounding purpose: It adjusts the speed of light. To shift the phase of
light is to slow it down. When light is carrying a data signal, a change in its
speed causes a change in the signal. Rapid and precise shifts in phase will
thereby modulate the signal, supporting data transmission with minimal loss
throughout the network. To change the phase of light traveling through an
optical fiber conductor, or bus waveguide, the MEMS mechanism moves a piece of
translucent silicon called a coupler into close proximity with the bus.

Figure 1. Two stages of motion for the MEMS mechanism in the phase shifter.

The design of the MEMS mechanism in the phase shifter provides two stages of
motion (Figure 1). The first stage provides a simple on–off movement of the
coupler waveguide, thereby engaging or disengaging the coupler to the bus. When
the coupler is engaged, a finer range of motion is then provided by the second
stage. This enables tuning of the gap between the coupler and bus, which
provides precise modulation of phase change in the optical signal. “Moving the
coupler toward the bus is what changes the phase of the signal,” explains
Sattari. “The coupler is made from silicon with a high refractive index. When
the two components are coupled, a light wave moving through the bus will also
pass through the coupler, and the wave will slow down.” If the optical coupling
of the coupler and bus is not carefully controlled, the light’s waveform can be
distorted, potentially losing the signal — and the data.


DESIGNING AT NANOSCALE WITH OPTICAL AND ELECTROMECHANICAL SIMULATION

The challenge for Sattari and his team was to design a nanoscale mechanism to
control the coupling process as precisely and reliably as possible. As their
phase shifter would use electric current to physically move an optical element,
Sattari and the EPFL team took a two-track approach to the device’s design.
Their goal was to determine how much voltage had to be applied to the MEMS
mechanism to induce a desired shift in the photonic signal. Simulation was an
essential tool for determining the multiple values that would establish the
voltage versus phase relationship. “Voltage vs. phase is a complex multiphysics
question. The COMSOL Multiphysics software gave us many options for breaking
this large problem into smaller tasks,” Sattari says. “We conducted our
simulation in two parallel arcs, using the RF Module for optical modeling and
the Structural Mechanics Module for electromechanical simulation.”

The optical modeling (Figure 2) included a mode analysis, which determined the
effective refractive index of the coupled waveguide elements, followed by a
study of the signal propagation. “Our goal is for light to enter and exit our
device with only the desired change in its phase,” Sattari says. “To help
achieve this, we can determine the eigenmode of our system in COMSOL.”

Figure 2. Left: Light passes from left to right through a path composed of an
optical bus and a coupled movable waveguide. Right: Cross-sectional slices of a
simulated light waveform as it passes through the coupled device. By adjusting
the distance between the two optical elements in their simulation, the EPFL team
could determine how that distance affected the speed, or phase, of the optical
signal.

Images courtesy EPFL and licensed under CC BY 4.0

Figure 3. Simulation showing deformation of the movable waveguide support
structure. The thin elements that suspend the movable waveguide will flex in
response to an applied voltage.

Image courtesy EPFL and licensed under CC BY 4.0

Figure 4. Optical simulation (left) established the vertical distance between
the coupler and waveguide that would result in a desired phase shift in the
optical signal. Electromechanical simulation (right) determined the voltage
that, when applied to the MEMS mechanism, would move the coupler waveguide to
the desired distance away from the bus.

Images courtesy EPFL and licensed under CC BY 4.0

Along with determining the physical forms of the waveguide and actuation
mechanism, simulation also enabled Sattari to study stress effects, such as
unwanted deformation or displacement caused by repeated operation. “Every
decision about the design is based on what the simulation showed us,” he says.


ADDING TO THE FOUNDATION OF FUTURE PHOTONIC NETWORKS

The goal of this project was to demonstrate how MEMS phase shifters could be
produced with existing fabrication capabilities. The result is a robust and
reliable design that is achievable with existing surface micromachined
manufacturing processes, and occupies a total footprint of just 60 μm × 44 μm.
Now that they have an established proof of concept, Sattari and his colleagues
look forward to seeing their designs integrated into the world’s optical data
networks. “We are creating building blocks for the future, and it will be
rewarding to see their potential become a reality,” says Sattari.


REFERENCES

 1. H. Sattari et al., “Silicon Photonic MEMS Phase-Shifter,” Optics Express,
    vol. 27, no. 13, pp. 18959–18969, 2019.
 2. T.J. Seok et al., “Large-scale broadband digital silicon photonic switches
    with vertical adiabatic couplers,” Optica, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 64–70, 2016.


Keep Reading ↓ Show less
{"imageShortcodeIds":["32366883","32366901","32366913"]}

Telecommunications Webinar


MULTIBAND ANTENNA SIMULATION AND WIRELESS KPI EXTRACTION

EXPLORE HOW TO LEVERAGE THE STATE-OF-THE-ART HIGH-FREQUENCY SIMULATION
CAPABILITIES OF ANSYS HFSS TO INNOVATE AND DEVELOP ADVANCED MULTIBAND ANTENNA
SYSTEMS.


Ansys

Ansys engineering simulation and 3D design software delivers product modeling
solutions with unmatched scalability and a comprehensive multiphysics
foundation.

29 Oct 2024
1 min read
2


In this upcoming webinar, explore how to leverage the state-of-the-art
high-frequency simulation capabilities of Ansys HFSS to innovate and develop
advanced multiband antenna systems.


OVERVIEW

This webinar will explore how to leverage the state-of-the-art high-frequency
simulation capabilities of Ansys HFSS to innovate and develop advanced multiband
antenna systems. Attendees will learn how to optimize antenna performance and
analyze installed performance within wireless networks. The session will also
demonstrate how this approach enables users to extract valuable wireless and
network KPIs, providing a comprehensive toolset for enhancing antenna design,
optimizing multiband communication, and improving overall network performance.
Join us to discover how Ansys HFSS can transform wireless system design and
network efficiency approach.




WHAT ATTENDEES WILL LEARN

 * How to design interleaved multiband antenna systems using the latest
   capabilities in HFSS
 * How to extract Network Key Performance Indicators
 * How to run and extract RF Channels for the dynamic environment


WHO SHOULD ATTEND

This webinar is valuable to anyone involved in antenna, R&D, product design, and
wireless networks.

Register now for this free webinar!

Keep Reading ↓ Show less

The Institute News


NEW IEEE SCHOLARSHIP HONORS SPACE-MAPPING PIONEER

INAUGURAL GRANT FOR PH.D. CANDIDATES AND POSTDOCS TO BE AWARDED NEXT YEAR


David Whyte

David Whyte is president and chair of the IEEE Canadian Foundation board of
directors.

25 Nov 2024
4 min read



IEEE Life Fellow John Bandler was known for pioneering space-mapping technology.

Beth Bandler

type:ti ieee news ieee canadian foundation ieee scholarships space mapping
engineering design optimization students

This year the IEEE Canadian Foundation established the Dr. John William Bandler
Graduate Scholarship in Engineering Design in honor of the world-renowned
engineer, teacher, and innovator. Bandler, an IEEE Life Fellow, died on 28
September 2023. He was known for pioneering space-mapping technology, which
enables optimal, high-fidelity design of devices, circuits, and systems at a
cost of only a few high-fidelity simulations.

The scholarship—funded by a donation from Bandler’s wife, Beth—provides an
annual award of about US $3,550 (CAD $5,000) to a Ph.D. student or postdoctoral
fellow at a Canadian university who is conducting research in electromagnetic
optimization in micromillimeter- or millimeter-wave engineering,
micromillimeter- or millimeter-wave imaging and inverse-scattering, engineering
design optimization, or space mapping. The scholarship is to be awarded for the
first time next year.



Bandler was an entrepreneur and a professor. In 1983 he founded Optimization
Systems Associates in Hamilton, Ontario, to commercialize his methodology and
algorithms. His award-winning research during his 50-year career revolutionized
the engineering and computer-assisted design of microwave circuitry.

His practical application of space mapping, device modeling, and optimization
theories led to significant reductions in the development costs of a wide
variety of electronic systems.

His research was published in more than 500 publications.

Bandler served as dean of the faculty of engineering at McMaster University,
also in Hamilton, and taught electrical engineering there from 1969 until his
death.

“He was a trusted teacher, advisor, and friend to McMaster,” says Heather
Sheardown, the university’s current dean of the faculty of engineering. “His
innovations truly transformed engineering design optimization.”








A FOCUS ON SIMULATION, OPTIMIZATION, AND CONTROL

Bandler was born in Jerusalem during World War II, and his family moved to
Nicosia, Cyprus, when he was a youngster. As a teenager, the family moved to
England, where he completed high school and attended the Imperial College
London, which at the time was part of the University of London. He received
three engineering degrees from Imperial: a bachelor’s in 1963, a Ph.D. in 1967,
and doctor of science in 1976.

After earning his Ph.D., he briefly worked at Mullard Research Laboratories, in
Redhill, England, before accepting a postdoctoral fellowship at the University
of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed the fellowship in 1969 and joined
McMaster University as an engineering professor. During his almost 55-year-long
career there, he served as the 1978–1979 chair of the electrical engineering
department and as dean of the faculty of engineering from 1979 to 1981.

In 1973 he established a research group to focus on simulation, optimization,
and control. The group later was named the Simulation Optimization Systems
Research Laboratory.

“Bandler was a trusted teacher, advisor, and friend to McMaster. His innovations
truly transformed engineering design optimization.”—Heather Sheardown

It was in that lab that Bandler developed his space-mapping technology and other
optimization algorithms.

To help commercialize his innovations, in 1983 he founded Optimization Systems
Associates, which was sold in 1997 to Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The division
later was spun off into Keysight Technologies of Santa Rosa, Calif.

Bandler received several awards for his work, including the 2023 IEEE
Electromagnetics Award, the 2013 IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society
(IEEE MTT-S) Microwave Career Award, and the 2012 IEEE Canada McNaughton Gold
Medal.

He was appointed as an Order of Canada officer in 2016 for his scientific
contributions, which helped position the country at the forefront of microwave
engineering.


ELEVATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ENGINEERS

In addition to conducting research and teaching, Bandler mentored students and
young professionals. He volunteered for the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave
Symposium’s Three Minute Thesis, a program that connects graduate students in
engineering with mentors to help them better explain their research. At the end
of the event, participants present their work in less than three minutes, using
only one slide to a panel of judges who are not engineers. Starting this year,
the program has been renamed the John Bandler Memorial Three Minute Thesis
Competition.

In his acceptance speech for the IEEE Electromagnetics Award in 2023, Bandler
spoke directly to students and young professionals and said: “Just about
everything I’m known for one expert or another has discouraged me from doing. So
students and young professionals, let naysayers say no. Especially if they say
‘No, go for it.’

“It took me 30 years to discover common sense hidden in plain sight, and
electromagnetic optimization took off,” he said. “What are you waiting for? Your
own breakthrough is staring at you.”








BLENDING CREATIVITY WITH TECHNICAL EXPERTISE

Bandler was a multifaceted individual with a rich artistic background.

“One day I found myself in my mother-in-law’s studio with a paintbrush in hand
and a canvas on an easel, so I started painting,” he said in a Toronto Globe and
Mail interview. “Until then I didn’t even know I had an interest in art. I was
strictly an engineer, an academic, and a committed entrepreneur.”

His love of painting turned into a passion for art history, writing plays, and
making films. Several of his plays were performed at the Hamilton Fringe
Festival and theaters in the Canadian city. Many of his plays, films, and
writings can be viewed on YouTube as well as his website.

Bandler’s legacy is greater than his disruptive innovations in microwave design
and optimization. His life journey encompassed art, theater, fiction,
entrepreneurial activities, and academia, leaving a lasting impact on those who
experienced his work and spent time with him. His ability to blend creativity
with technical expertise made him a remarkable figure in both artistic and
engineering circles.

To donate to—or nominate a candidate for—the Bandler Graduate Scholarship in
Engineering Design, visit the IEEE Canadian Foundation website.

From Your Site Articles
 * Double Your Impact This Giving Tuesday ›
 * Why These Members Donate to the IEEE Foundation ›
 * Meet the Teens Whose Tech Reduces Drownings and Fights Air Pollution ›

Keep Reading ↓ Show less





word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
word word word word word word word word

mmMwWLliI0fiflO&1
mmMwWLliI0fiflO&1
mmMwWLliI0fiflO&1
mmMwWLliI0fiflO&1
mmMwWLliI0fiflO&1
mmMwWLliI0fiflO&1
mmMwWLliI0fiflO&1