networkZONE Products for the week of April 1, 2003
Graviton RF Says…
GravitonRF: Attractive products for exchanging information
(Moncton, NB, April 1, 2003) - Startup GravitonRF today announced
a successful test of its MEMS-based (Micro Electro Mechanical System) Gravi-link
omni-directional wireless interconnect. Unlike electromagnetically-based
communications systems, typified by use of RF and Optical modulation schemes,
this system is capable of under-the-horizon communications. In fact Gravi-link
is capable of communicating through and under water, making high-powered
SONAR, which is suspected of causing the beaching of whales and other ocean mammals, obsolete. DARPA, the
US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, could not be reached for comment
on this Canadian technology, though rumours abound that they are quite miffed
in having missed the boat on this key communications technology.
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andy Turudic, also President of startup NliteN, inc (www.nliten.us), stated, "This all started with an idea seeded by Patrick Mannion of EE Times (www.eet.com) at an industry press gathering called by Lee Goldberg of analogZONE (www.analogzone.com) and Green-Electronics (www.green-electronics.com) After a week of having what seemed to be science-fiction running through my brain I thought, why not eh? I knew, from drinking beer with him, that Dr. Andrew MacInnes, now in the renowned materials research group in TriQuint Semiconductor, TX, had received patents on precursors used for growing seemingly impossible films with MOCVD on Gallium Arsenide. I also knew that many of my middle-aged engineer and material science acquaintances, myself included, were unemployed and could be had for minimum wage as their unemployment benefits ran out - significantly cheaper than H1B or L1 visa holders currently serving the job pool. This had all the makings of a massively lucrative Wall St. moneymaker. I pulled the team together and gave them the plan and technical direction for a communications device that they ran to prototype completion."
The basic principle behind the Gravi-link system is elegant in its simplicity in that it exploits the two-mass gravitational equation, first derived by Sir Isaac Newton and universally dreaded by most high school seniors. It is well known that two masses attract and that the force of that attraction varies with the inverse square of the distance. By placing two very dense masses in extremely close proximity to each other, an intense near-field set of gravitational flux lines is created. By varying the distance between these two masses, the gravitational flux density changes, or is modulated, producing an emission of gravitational photons, or gravitons. The receiver operates by superposition of the phenomena.
GravitonRF has used thin films precursor technology to deposit depleted Uranium Oxide onto Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), much like the methods used by MacInnes, or Bell Labs with Gadolinium Oxide deposition, on GaAs. Then a selective etch is used to carve out an array of cantilevers, where two facing UO3 layers are separated by about a 500 Angstrom gap. Then, it's simply a matter of utilizing the piezoelectric properties of the GaAs, using power MESFETs that are integral to the process, to move the cantilevers. Part of the reason for situating GravitonRF in Canada is the abundant availability of depleted Uranium from its Candu heavy-water reactors, Canada's relaxed attitudes, relative to its neighbour to the south, to providing Uranium for research seconded only by France, and the technology tax incentives offered by the New Brunswick government that more or less paid for the R&D.
Turudic said, "While this demonstration has proven exciting, there's still work to be done and Venture Capital money to take and spend. We still need to increase the graviton power levels by increasing the number of cantilevers in the array and by decreasing the cantilever gap to a few Angstroms. So far, with an array of 12 cantilevers, we have been able to demonstrate 10-13 BER (Bit Error Rate) over a distance of 1 km, about the length of the Magnetic Hill that's near here. We think if we go wafer scale on 6 inch GaAs substrates that we can communicate between any set of terrestrial terminals without any wiring or fiber. The beauty of using gravitons is that they travel at about 27 times faster than the speed of light, reducing latency, and this scheme makes all the work by the bullies in the ATM and OIF Forums completely useless. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Patrick Mannion and Lee Goldberg and before I leave for the USA, I'm recommending to GravitonRf's Board of Directors that they issue 10 shares of GravitonRF stock each to Patrick and Lee for their contribution that put us on the map. I'm pleased that this venture has proven successful, for it allows me to turn over the reins to the GravitonRF management team, reap the benefit from my $1 million share stock options, and to return to the serious design of GHz speed mixed signal electronics."
For more information, please visit the GravitonRf website at www.gravitonrf.com.
analogZONE Says . . .
I originally became familiar with GravitonRF's work while attending a meeting of the 802.11gr working group which is currently at work defining the specifications for a gravity wave-based PHY layer for the popular 802.11 wireless LAN standard. It seems that this promising new technology has given birth to a flock of startups and triggering a stampede of venture capital that dwarfs the investments of the late 1990s.
While most of the activity centers around the "Graviton Corridor" in New Jersey, there are also a handful of intrepid VC-funded groups laboring out on the "Gravity Tundra" of New Brunswick, Canada. The billions of dollars pouring into this sparsely-populated region have pulled most of the best and brightest minds from the high-tech centers in Ottawa/Kanata, and Vancouver to the hastily-erected clusters of trailer parks that now surround Moncton's three major strip malls. That's where I caught up with Andy Turudic when I visited GravitonRF last week for an exclusive sneak preview of their 802.11gr technology.
Turudic and co-founder, Dr. Andrew MacInnes met me at the Moncton International Airport and Sod Farm after the ski-equipped mail plane dropped me off at the double-wide mobile home that served as the main arrivals terminal. After an extended press conference at the nearby Elbow Room Tavern I was in the mood for a good nap, but had to settle for a tour of the GravitonRF lab facility instead. What little I remember of the tour was very impressive. Actually, after the six pitchers of Molson Export we consumed at the Elbow Room, I'm impressed I remember anything at all. One of the things I do remember most clearly however, is how much really nifty-looking scientific equipment you can fit into a mobile home once you remove the partitions between the living room and kitchen.
After a brief nap in the GravitonRF conference room, and a few cups of very strong coffee, we looked at the prototype base station and its massive phased-array gravity collimator cone that provide directional links to the mobile terminal units. We then proceeded through the snow drifts to a second research trailer where the mobile demonstration transceiver set-up was housed. True to their claims, the small array of uranium-tipped MEMs devices can transmit and receive data at several hundred kbits/s over a range of nearly a mile. Since the mobile home that housed the lab had no elevator shaft that often serves as my customary impromptu shield for WLAN tests, I moved the lab cart holding the test set-up into the bathroom at the far end of the trailer. Unlike RF-based WiFi devices, the Graviton transceiver did not seem to have any signal attenuation from the extra walls and metal plumbing that now sat between it and the base station.
I'm pretty confident Andy and his team will eventually be able to boost the range of the graviton transceivers far beyond the prototypes he demonstrated for me, but there are several technical issues that must be resolved before these devices are ready for commercialization. For one thing, the gravity waves emitted by the device are quite weak, so the receiving device must have a graviton conversion efficiency of over 10^32 Smoots/fortnight2, which is roughly equivalent to an RF sensitivity of -235 dB. So even with a 64-chip spread-spectrum coding scheme and forward error-correction code scrambling, the front end is twitchy enough that if the balance weights in the tires of passing semi-rigs hit just the right rotational speed, they can send the receiver into fits of unconstrained ecstasy in which it decodes short passages from the Akashic Records.
Some of this will be dealt with in production units by the addition of further PHY-layer run-length coding, and larger transmitter arrays which produce gravity waves with sufficient amplitude that the receiver does not have to be run at its maximum gain setting. Nevertheless, I am quite concerned about possible radiation effects from the uranium weights used at the tips of the MEMS arrays. While I was assured the material was "depleted" uranium, similar to the stuff found in U.S. artillery shells, I could not help but notice the radiation dosimeter badges and bulky lead-lined suits worn by all of the personnel working in close proximity to the transceiver or mobile unit. Turudic and his partners refused to comment on the protective equipment, claiming that this information was "proprietary" and, if discussed at all, could reveal important trade secrets to one or more of GravitonRF's competitors. A small fistfight broke out as I tried to convince Andy to reveal the actual materials used in the MEMS cantilevers, and to loan me a badge and a protective suit. Since I was offered neither piece of safety equipment, I called the demonstration to a premature halt and returned to the safety of the airport.
In conclusion, while the GravitonRF prototypes exhibit extremely promising results, I expect it will take a while longer than the company to work out the sensitivity and safety issues uncovered by the prototype. Of course, the six to twelve months of delays should still place the manufacturer well inside the time window needed to capture the market, since there is still a pitched battle raging between several factions within the 802.11gr committee about which PHY-layer encoding scheme to use and whether the protocol needs an PACK/NACK handshake sequence to handle hidden node problems.
The point may be moot however, because of the recent
press release from Atheros, Intel, and Proxim, announcing their joint venture
to release their Einstein™ graviton transceiver and related applications
support software six-to-twelve months ahead of the 802.11 committee's deadline
for a gravity wave PHY. If their plan succeeds, their small ad-hoc "coalition
of gravity partners" could fragment the market and keep it from achieving
the sales necessary to justify a high-volume production line. Only time
will tell if the 802.11gr committee can reason with this break-away faction,
or if it will be necessary to call in an air strike to silence them.
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