A mobile network of high-powered radio transmitters will track Marines in the field. Next up: firefighters and schoolkids.
Forget Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G. There's already a form of wireless that offers blazing-fast data rates, supports high-definition TV feeds, and - if given the chance, say its most ardent supporters - could replace the billion-dollar networks used by Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. It's the controversial, decades-old technology known as ultrawideband. Fourteen months ago, the FCC granted provisional approval for short-range UWB applications. Hardly a ringing endorsement, but enough to boost R&D at large companies like Motorola and Intel and well-heeled startups like Time Domain and XtremeSpectrum. But it's a tiny, unassuming firm in Nicasio, California, that could do for wireless what Cisco did for the Internet.
The company is Aether Wire & Location, and its patented localizer is a pager-sized transceiver that in three years could be as small as a wedding ring and as ubiquitous as a barcode. Think of Aether's localizers as digital remakes of Marconi's original wireless system. They send and receive ultra-brief, ultra-intense radio pulses across a wide band of unlicensed spectrum. Their signals can penetrate about a foot of rock, concrete, or metal. Also, localizers currently send data as fast as 10 Kbps, but fully realized ultrawideband can transmit as fast as 100 Mbps or more, at ranges up to 100 feet – nearly 10 times faster than Wi-Fi. And when three or more are turned on, they can beam their location and orientation - within a half inch of accuracy - to nearly any device. "We could carry voice traffic if we wanted to, but we can't compete with cellular," says Robert Fleming, chair of Aether. "Even if it were technically feasible, think of the enemies we'd make. We prefer to focus on the problems people can't see."
Slated for release early next year, Aether's device offers a combination of obstacle penetration, precise positioning, and stealth. These attributes helped the Darpa-funded company snag a two-year, million-dollar contract with the US Marine Corps last October. The mission: Use localizers to track soldiers and prevent friendly-fire casualties. Because the device can broadcast millions of pulses per second across 500 MHz or more of spectrum, few mediums (dense, wet soil is one) can completely block its signal. Power comes from AAA batteries, but a future, miniaturized version will run on watch batteries.
Localizers can also perform triangulation relative to themselves and to signals broadcast from fixed points. Even indoors. Even underground. In addition to a transceiver and an antenna, localizers can contain memory chips and processors, effectively becoming wireless sensors. Aside from tracking Marines, they could be used to, say, assess conditions faced by firefighters inside a burning factory. Or port officials could use them to "see" inside metal shipping containers for quick and easy cargo verification.
The farthest-reaching application, however, is on the battlefield. The brevity, low power, and broad frequency range of a localizer's signal means it's nearly impossible to detect and intercept. What's more, it can't be jammed without jamming everything else in the vicinity. Soldiers could drop a trail of localizers - electronic breadcrumbs, essentially - to create a wireless P2P network. Clip the gadgets to their belts, and the network becomes mobile.
But why stop with the military? The first localizers will cost $10 to $15 each, and the price will drop dramatically once economies of scale kick in. They'd be cheap enough for nervous parents to affix to their kids' backpacks, or for anyone to attach to a key ring, so keys would never get lost again. Within a decade, geographic areas could be carpet bombed with localizers: an instant infrastructure that makes a sensor and mouthpiece of the landscape itself.
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