

Amazing new wireless tech: Breaking Shannon's Law - jedi_stannis
http://onlivespot.blogspot.com/2011/06/steve-perlman-unveils-amazing-new.html

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aphyr
"They don't use wireless energy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
aidenn0
They have developed on amateur frequencies since the FCC denied them an
experimental license.

~~~
chopsueyar
So, 5.8GHz or 2.4GHz or 900MHz, or what? Are the 40s (MHz) still available?

I wonder how this beats the curvature of the earth, or is it being bounced of
the ionosphere, or penetrating through the earth?

It is either a lost work of Tesla or a bad version of this Douglas Rushkoff
novel...

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1887128905/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1887128905/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=littdidd-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1887128905)

~~~
aidenn0
Amateur, not unlicensed:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations)

While the 40M band beats the curvature of the earth quite reliably, I would
expect that they are doing something in the UHF band if they plan on deploying
this in licensed cell-phone frequencies.

Also the amateur band lets them transmit at much higher power than the ISM
bands:

[http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2010/octqtr/47cfr15.245.ht...](http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2010/octqtr/47cfr15.245.htm)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relevant patents: <http://patents.com/us-20110044193.html>
[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-
adv.htm&r=6&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=pall&S1=\(%22Perlman,+Stephen%22.INNM.\)&OS=IN/%22Perlman,+Stephen%22&RS=IN/%22Perlman,+Stephen%22)

~~~
Kyotoku
Can get the pdf here. Nice, Mvandenbergh!
[http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT741...](http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT7418053)
and here
[http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATAPP...](http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATAPP12917257&id=qbcnAQAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=SYSTEMS+AND+METHODS+TO+COORDINATE+TRANSMISSIONS+IN+DISTRIBUTED+WIRELESS+SYSTEMS+VIA+USER+CLUSTERING+&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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sp332
The "interesting" bit starts at 55 minutes.

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

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

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

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

Tivo (just outside your 10 year limit though)

Flip Video

Roomba

SpaceX

Telsa

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

~~~
nl
You have to look at it context - not every market works as quickly as the
consumer tech market.

In the vacuum cleaner market there have been two major revolutions in the last
30 years.

The first was the Dyson. It was launched in _1986_ and has slowly taken over
the high end vacuum cleaner market.

The Roomba seems to be following a similar path. I know a few people who use
it, and it has been a huge success for the company.

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

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

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throwaway32
I'm really excited for the potential of wireless technologies like this to
break the last mile death grip companies like AT&T and Comcast have. We are at
the point where spectrum regulation/management isn't even necessary, except
for legacy devices.

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

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aidenn0
What are the odds the FCC allows it?

