Augmented Reality

Virtual reality used to be known as Holy Grail of technology and had many people invest their time and money on it and thus it led to the birth of Augmented Reality (AR), a sub technology of virtual reality in which computer graphics are layered onto a real world image became a reality. In the last decades it was used in research labs to demonstrate how to piece a complex machine together by modeling it in 3D even before it is built just like they show you in the Iron Man movie, where the hero is seen crafting his suit and in various research and military simulators. Our eyes with the help of our brain can see and understand a lot of objects but they cannot see the facts or the trivial data behind these objects. To do so we have to go to supplementary sources like encyclopedias or the internet. Sometimes the objects carry metadata like a text, barcode or RFID signals.

Instead of going to other sources to update the relevant information we can also go to other virtual eye which see more and augment the reality with additional information and required data in real-time. Cameras in smartphones are such virtual eyes which while we are focusing on an image or location, computes the GPS information and links the relevant information databases on the internet with picture or with location based information, retrieve data, integrate these data back into the cell phone screen and you can see the facts behind the reality as they are labeled onto them in real time even without realizing the mechanism that I mentioned ever took place thus making "Terminator” like vision no longer confined to just the realm of science fiction flicks.

The whole concept of augmented reality based applications are already available and in use on GPS enabled smart phones as location based service. Currently anyone with a smart phone like an iPhone or phones that supports Google Android or the latest Nokia based Symbian can enable this, where one would be able to peer at the world through the phone's camera and will see super imposed layered extra information streamed from dedicated servers that provides the service or from sites like Wikipedia or Google onto their phone screen about the physical things in front of them at which they are pointing the device.

Nokia in 2008 unveiled the “Point & Find” application that became a huge hit, a service currently only in Europe that uses a phone's camera to identify objects and present relevant information on screen in real time. Point and Find application combines real-time image processing and recognition technology with the phone's data connection and GPS location to link the camera's real-life images to related digital content and services. Barcode scanning has also been integrated. At the Consumer Electronics Show two years ago, Intel also demonstrated a concept device that could capture images with its built-in camera and overlay pertinent information on the display, such as restaurant menus, real time foreign language translations, and direction and orientation. Later Google came up with it “Goggles” application for the Android platform with more functionality which is similar to the Nokia’s “Point & Find”. The technology that has brought augmented reality initially to mobiles is called “Layar”. As the name suggests, it layers computer information on top of "reality" as seen through the phone's camera. Layar uses the phone's Global Positioning System (GPS) to work out where you are and what you are looking at. Different types of information appear on different layers: there's a sightseeing layer called Wikitude which contains tourist information about what's around you – the posts are linked to specific buildings and points of interest and pop up information as you pass by them by pointing your camera phone at the site of your interest.

As augmented reality about to be opened up to the mobile phone-owning masses, it has become an exciting field for development and new found applications. Developers are racing to find useful and interesting ways that computers can enhance our interaction with the real world.

Nano Communication Networks

Nano communication networks by definition is a communicating network made of "nanoradios" which at the core is a single molecule whose key circuitry consists of a single carbon nanotube that can receive radio signals and communicate among themselves.Physicist Richard Feynman once presciently stated that "there is plenty of room at the bottom" in his famous lecture which is considered a classic at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) with reference to the importance of atomic scale, and communication that is needed down there. Presently there is a growing trend of practical results from diverse fields that both leverages and overcomes the communication barriers of the nanoscale environment which includes random carbon nanotube networks, calcium signaling, molecular motors and quantum networking to name a few. Nanocom networks focuses upon ad hoc communication networking at the nanoscale using all of these techniques.This new area technology is been touted to lead a major new revolution in the wireless communication industry in the coming decades by many leading academic communities across the globe.

Giant advances and improvements in the field of nanotechnology over the last decade and with the availability of new nanotech tools that are allowing researchers to practically fabricate very small devices have resulted in the vision of nanonetworks composed of a number of nanoradios communicating with each other for a specific nanoscale application and the practical realization of "Network on Chip" or NoC which is similar to the concept of the existing "System on Chip" or SoC concept,which would require this level of radio communication between the tiny embedded elements within the chip.All wireless devices, from mobile phones to environmental sensors,stand to benefit from this as nanoradios require smaller electronic component­s, would reduce power consumption, extend battery life and improve efficiency and thus ensuring a new renaissance in all the future communication domains.

Many nanocom paradigms that are currently being researched and standardized for the industry are as follows:-

• Architectures, topologies and algorithms for nanoscale communication:-Network architectures,Networks-on-Chip (NoC),topologies, coverage and connectivity, synchronization, relay, broadcast, and multiple-access mechanisms, routing/addressing in nanonetworks, reliable information coding and communication, error control, energy efficiency.
• Modeling and analysis of nanocommunication:–Physical characterization/modeling of nanoscale interconnects, and programmable or configurable devices, statistical mechanics modeling of nano-communications, applications of complex network theory, network coding and information flow for nanonetworks, network calculus and queuing theoretical analysis.
• Nanoscale ad hoc and sensor networks:–Communication systems and protocols for nanoscale ad hoc networks, nano-sensor networks, networks of micro/nanorobotic systems, self-organizing nanobio networks, molecular sensing and sampling.
• Future nanonetworks with new nano-machines and interconnects:-Nanonetworks deployed with carbon-nanotubes (CNTs),nanowires, nanoparticles, graphene devices, nanoscale optical, wireless, and electromechanical communication technologies,quantum entanglement with nanoscale photon detectors.
• Information theoretical approaches to nanoscale communication:–Information theory and network information theory aspects of nano-networks, modeling, capacity bounds and theorems for various nanoscale communication channels, nanoscale transceiver and modulation optimization, nanoscale and molecular source and channel coding.
• Molecular communication:–Sparse-molecule communication, short/mid/long range molecular communications for nanonetworks, molecular motors, calcium signaling, communication via diffusive processes, single-nanotube radios, quantum molecular entanglement, stigmergic communication techniques.
• Quantum communication networks:-Hybrid classical quantum communication networks, repeaters, teleportation,entanglement swapping, nanoscale photon detectors, quantum dot networks, quantum electron transport in nanoscale semiconductor structures, nano-mechanical quantum communication systems.
• Applications for nanoscale communications:–Communication among molecular scale chemical and biosensors, nano-sensors and actuators network, in-body nanonetworks, heterogeneous bio-nano networks.

A farsighted early foray into the above mentioned nanocom fields by the technological companies would find themselves ensuring a profitable solid position as leaders later in this upcoming new wireless communication paradigm.

Protoype Radio:

Using carrier waves in the commercially relevant 40-400 MHz range and both frequency and amplitude modulation (FM and AM), the Berkeley Lab team has demonstrated successful music and voice reception with the nanotube radio. After being received, filtered, amplified, and demodulated by the nanotube radio, the signal was further amplified by a current preamplifier, sent to an audio loudspeaker and recorded. Click here to listen to a recording and see the radio in operation.

The Berkeley Lab nanotube radio consists of an individual CNT mounted to an electrode in close proximity to a counter electrode. Both the electrodes and nanotube are in a vacuum, typically below 10 -7 Torr. A direct current voltage (dc) source, such as from a battery or solar cell array, is connected to the electrodes and powers the radio. The dc voltage negatively charges the tip of the nanotube, tensioning it as desired to tune into oscillating electric fields. Thus the radio can be tuned while in operation to receive only a preselected band of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Applications:

• All-in-one radio receiver for cell phones/wireless networks/GPS and other electronic devices
• Radio controlled devices that can exist inside the body, e.g. used as drug release triggers, diagnostic instrumentation, interfacing with muscle or brain function
• Ultra small hearing aid
• RF antenna, tunable pass filter, amplifier, or demodulator
• Mass spectrometer
• Chemical sensor

Advantages:

• Orders of magnitude smaller than previous radios – can fit inside a living cell
• Eliminates wiring/thermal problems associated with unifying a micro or nano-scale radio system
• Extremely low power requirements
• Can be tuned after fabrication and during operation
• Can be manufactured individually or in arrays
• Smaller, more inexpensive and more sensitive than state-of-the-art mass spectrometers or chemical sensors.

The carbon nanotube radio receiver was first demonstrated in 2007 and is now available for licensing or collaborative research. Interested Parties should contact the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/about/contactus.html.
Reference numbers: IB-2431, 2432, 2433, 2434, 2435. Published patent application WO/2009/048695 available at www.wipo.int.

Wi-Fi Direct:The next heir to Bluetooth

People say history repeats…let me explain why it might be true in this case. We haven’t heard much about the great Danish monarch, Harald Blåtand Gormson, in this part of the world who once ruled reigned the Nordic and Scandinavian Europe of the late 9th century and is regarded as having united the dissonant tribes of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden under a single king into a single kingdom. He also constructed the oldest known bridge in southern Scandinavia, known as the Ravninge Bridge in Ravninge meadows which was quite a feat during the late 9th centuary and many strategic forts connecting his people. We now him more commonly by the linguistically corrupted and anglicized version of Danish word Blåtand as “Bluetooth”, more commonly referred to the Bluetooth wireless technology designed to enable cable-free peer to peer connections between computers, mobile phones, printers, etc. Ironically blå in modern Scandinavic languages literally means black. So if one wants to be historically correct, the translation of Harald Blátönn would rather be Harald Blacktooth than Harald Bluetooth.

The point that this technology is named Bluetooth in these devices is that Bluetooth does the same with communications protocols just like the old monarch did, uniting dissonant peer to peer communicating devices and bridging them together by one universal standard named after this king who did the same with his people. The omnipresent Bluetooth logo on most the supporting devices consists of the Nordic Long-branch runic scripts merged with Germanic runes for this kings initials, H i.e. (Hagall) and B i.e. (Berkanan).

Bluetooth is an open wireless protocol for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks. It was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to RS232 data cables. It can connect several devices, overcoming problems of synchronization. It uses a radio technology called frequency-hopping spread spectrum, which chops up the data being sent and transmits chunks of it on up to 79 frequencies. It can achieve a gross data rate of 1 Mb/s. Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, telephones, laptops, personal computers, printers, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, digital cameras, and video game consoles through a secure, globally unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) 2.4 GHz short-range radio frequency bandwidth. The Bluetooth specifications are developed and licensed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) primarily led by the Nordic technological giants in the field of telecommunications which explains the attributed name. It has become the de facto standard communications protocol primarily designed for low power consumption, with a short range (power-class-dependent: 100m, 10m and 1m, but ranges vary in practice; see table below) based on low-cost transceiver microchips in each device. Bluetooth makes it possible for these devices to communicate with each other when they are in range. Because the devices use a radio (broadcast) communications system, they do not have to be in line of sight of each other. This wasn’t the part where I was trying to explain that history repeats.

It was known that Harald Blåtand was overthrown and driven away into hiding as he no longer had control of Norway having to settle back into the border area between Scandinavia and Germany by Sweyn Forkbeard, his illegitimate rebellious son, who led an uprising against his father in 987, and chased him out of the court, forcing him to abandon his kingdom and forcibly deposed him as king. Harald apparently spent the rest of his days hiding with the Slavs in Wendland, within modern-day Germany. Harald was later killed fighting off a rebellion led by Sweyn who became a Viking leader, he became King of Denmark and he was ruler over most of Norway. After a long effort at conquest, and shortly before his death, in 1013 he also became King of England.

A thousand years later the present day “Bluetooth” could soon face a similar fate by the new age Sweyn called “Wi-Fi Direct” that would soon overwhelm the market by late 2010 and could just morph into the existing Wi-Fi devices by a simple firmware update just like another mobile top up service. The only thing that Bluetooth is holding the ground against this uprising is that it consumes low power compared to this new rebel. The Wi-Fi Alliance group is fine tuning this short coming of the “Wi-Fi Direct” and has promised to over throw the incumbent peer to peer communication ruler once and for all and at least send him into hiding if not kill him at the first attack scheduled by late 2010.

Wi-Fi Direct can provide the same short range, ad hoc device connectivity as Bluetooth using the same wireless networking hardware that is already included in virtually every other device, so why bother adding a Bluetooth adapter and dealing with Bluetooth driver updates. Wi-Fi Direct will connect at existing Wi-Fi speeds i.e. up to 250 - 300 mbps. Wi-Fi Direct devices will also be able to broadcast their availability and seek out other Wi-Fi Direct devices. Wi-Fi Direct devices can connect in pairs or in groups. With Wi-Fi Direct only one of the devices needs to be compliant with Wi-Fi Direct to establish the peer-to-peer connection. So, for example, a Wi-Fi Direct-enabled mobile phone could establish a connection with a non-Wi-Fi Direct notebook computer to transfer files between the two. Thus Wi-Fi Direct plans to conquer Bluetooth territory. Wi-Fi Direct can enable the same device connectivity as Bluetooth, but at ranges and speeds equivalent to what users experience with existing Wi-Fi connections.

Wi-Fi Direct solves the problems in the existing ad-hoc system. Essentially, it embeds a software access point, or "soft AP", into any device that wishes to support Direct. The soft AP provides a version of Wi-Fi Protected Setup with its push-button setup. When a device enters the range of the Wi-Fi Direct host, it can connect to it using the existing ad-hoc protocol, and then gather setup information using a Protected Setup-style transfer. Connection and setup is so simplified that the Wi-Fi Direct lobby led by tech sharks like Intel, Apple and Cisco suggests it may replace Bluetooth completely.

Soft AP's can be as simple or as complex as the role requires. A digital picture frame might provide only the most basic services needed to allow digital cameras to connect and upload images. A smart phone that allows data tethering might run a more complex soft AP that adds the ability to bridge to the Internet.

The standard also includes WPA2 security and features to control access within corporate networks and can even be introduced for enterprise networks. One reason Bluetooth couldn’t get in that space was that it has been the subject of security issues like Bluejacking which enables an attacker to connect anonymously with an insecure Bluetooth device and hijack it or compromise its data very easily as it lacked WPA2 like security and features to control access within corporate networks.Bluejacking is possible in a radius of 20 feet. Wi-Fi ranges are much greater which opens the greater possibility of attack but Wi-Fi Direct is prepared and has better security, stands a better chance against such a intruder since it has foreseen and aware of the security concerns as well as the risks of not having them in place. Wi-Fi Direct will include support for WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) and AES encryption for more secure connections and measures are being developed to enable IT admins to exert some control over Wi-Fi Direct networks within their environment like the existing Wi-Fi networks.

Bluetooth's days would be numbered from the time Wi-Fi Direct is launched by late 2010 and the royal skimmerish starts. So its true when people says that history repeats !!!