Cell phones and other wireless devices have upended communications in recent years. Not only can you get a message just about anywhere on earth, you can look at maps, view videos, listen to music, shop, watch live news feeds and more.
But those options quickly fall away for travelers through Colorado’s mountain canyons, when traveling through tunnels, and for the minority who engage in scuba diving, when they are underwater.
For consumers it may not be a significant handicap that radio waves fail when blocked by stone or water.
For the military, it’s another matter, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
Which is why the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working on a solution.
Troy Olsson of the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office is betting on a little-exploited aspect of electromagnetic physics “that could expand wireless communication and data transfer into undersea, underground and other settings where such capabilities essentially have been absent,” the agency has confirmed.
It’s called A Mechanically Based Antenna, AMEBA, and the basis is the ultra-low-frequency, ULF, electromagnetic waves between hundreds of hertz and three kilohertz.
Waves at those frequencies can penetrate “some distance” into water, soil, rock, metal and building materials, the agency reports.
“A nearby band of very-low-frequency (VLF) signals (3 KHz to 30 KHz) opens additional communications possibilities because for these wavelengths the atmospheric corridor between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere – the highest and electric-charge-rich portion of the upper atmosphere – behaves like a radio waveguide in which the signals can propagate halfway around the planet,” the agency said.
“If we are successful, scuba divers would be able to use a ULF channel for low bit-rate communications, like text messages, to communicate with each other or with nearby submarines, ships, relay buoys, UAVs, and ground-based assets, Through-ground communication with people in deep bunkers, mines, or caves could also become possible,” Olsson explained.
It also could allow direct soldier-to-soldier text and voice communication across continents and oceans, the report said.
For the rest of this report, and more, please go to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
PropagandaGuard 