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++ News in brief +++ News in brief ++ Wearable network by IST project 2WEAR A new prototype developed by IST project 2WEAR allows wearable and portable devices communicate with each other via Bluetooth. The 2WEAR prototype is a wearable personal network that links together computing elements in an ad-hoc fashion using short-range radio. Certain elements are embedded into wearable objects, such as a wristwatch and small general-purpose computing and storage modules that can be attached to clothes or placed inside a wallet. Other elements of the system include conventional portable computers, like PDAs and mobile phones.
Stationary elements are also part of the system, including visible components, such as big screens and home appliances, while others are not directly perceivable by the user, such as network gateways and backend servers. “The system is able to dynamically discover and combine the user interface and storage resources of the devices that are in range with each other,” says project manager Spyros Lalis. “We have a couple of demo applications – an alarm application, city-guide application, and a game – that can be used to illustrate this.” The result is a system that
brings together various wearable devices without the user having to
explicitly provide input to the system. One example of this is two friends’
devices automatically exchanging data as they meet, and a camera storing
pictures on another device and backing them up to a server, all without
bothering the user. Another example is a tourist approaching an information
kiosk and using its display to review his walk on a city map and obtain
information about the photographed sites as his storage module uploads data
via the kiosk's access point. TIM starts combined EDGE-UMTS
services Under the brand name “TIM Turbo” Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) launched its new 3G services on 24 May. TIM Turbo is based on a combined EDGE-UMTS network. Current UMTS coverage has reached about 30 percent, thus fulfilling the regulatory requirements in Italy. The implementation of EDGE in the GSM network is already further ahead. By the end of 2004, the complete GSM network is expected to be equipped with EDGE. According to TIM, the maximum data rates are 384 kBit/s for UMTS and 200 kBit/s for EDGE. The new EDGE TIM Turbo mobile phones are the NOKIA 6230 and the NOKIA 3200. The first UMTS mobiles to be made available by TIM will be Sony Ericsson Z 1010 and the Samsung Z 105 U. The mobile phones offer multimedia services such as high-speed connection to the Internet, the reception and transmission of digital images, videos, photos and music files at transmission speeds in the order of hundreds of kilobit per second compared to the present speed of 40 kbit/s of the GPRS. All the services at present available on the GPRS network will transit on the new EDGE-UMTS network including, for example, “Mobile TV”, the TV on the mobile phone, which TIM launched last year. TIM announced that by the end of June, UMTS coverage will have exceeded the regulatory requirements. “TIM offers Edge and UMTS services in full compliance with the schedule announced during Telecom Day, the meeting with the financial community, and confirms its own roadmap for the complete development of third generation services,” commented Marco De Benedetti, Chief Executive Officer of TIM. According
to Dr. Benedetti, the value added services (VAS) generated 300 million euro
revenue for TIM in the domestic market alone in the first quarter of the
current year, with a year-on-year increase of 64% as concerns the more
innovate VAS, which now account for 19% of all VAS revenue. First communication transmission through terahertz waves Researchers from the high-frequency technology department of Braunschweig Technical University developed a new kind of modulator, which enables to modulate data on terahertz waves. “This is a further important step towards a wireless terahertz communication system,” said professor Martin Koch, head of the terahertz group. The motivation for such a system is the increasing demand for broadband, which can only be satisfied through higher frequencies. Currently, a number of applications based on terahertz techniques are under discussion, including medical diagnostics, security applications, and control of production processes.
The modulator structure is based on a known transistor concept, which was used for the first time in the context of terahertz communication. In an experiment, the modulators were placed in a transmitter-receiver system fed with music from a CD player. “In the first trials we could receive the music in about the quality you know from telephony,” explained Thomas Kleine-Ostmann, one of the researchers. Website of the terahertz group at Braunschweig Technical University: http://www.tu-braunschweig.de/ihf/ag/terahertz Reference: T. Kleine-Ostmann, K. Pierz, G. Hein, P. Dawson and M. Koch: Audio signal transmission over THz communication channel using semiconductor modulator. Electronic Letters 40, 124-126 (2004) Please send us your comments on this article. |
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