News by Subject Technology & Engineering

It sounds like an old-school vinyl record, but the distinctive crackle in the music streamed into Chris Holloway's laboratory is atomic in origin. The group spent years finding a way to directly measure electric fields using atoms. They don't expect the atomic-recording's lower sound quality to replace digital music recordings, but the team is considering how this 'entertaining' example of atomic sensing could be applied in communication devices of the future.

SEARCHLIGHT project radically rethinks wireless architectures for highly scalable ultra-dense millimeter-wave networks. Millimeter-wave technology will achieve data rates previously only possible with optical fiber.

By finding a certain kind of defect inside a block of diamond and fashioning a pattern of nanoscale pillars on the surface above it, Penn Engineering researchers can now control the shape of individual photons emitted by the defect. Because those photons carry information about the spin state of an electron, such a system could be used as the basis for compact quantum technologies. 

Researchers at Tokyo Tech and NEC Corporation, Japan, present a 39 GHz transceiver with built-in calibration for fifth-generation (5G) applications. The advantages to be gained include better quality communications as well as cost-effective scalability.

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have found a simple, yet highly versatile, way to generate 'chaotic signals' with various features. The technique consists of interconnecting three 'ring oscillators,' effectively making them compete against each other, while controlling their respective strengths and their linkages. The resulting device is rather small and efficient, thus suitable for emerging applications such as realizing wireless networks of sensors.

The invention uses magnets to record computer data which consume virtually zero energy, solving the dilemma of how to create faster data processing speeds without high energy costs. Today's data center servers consume between 2 to 5% of global electricity consumption, producing heat which needs more power to cool the servers. The problem is so acute services in the ocean in an effort to keep them cool and cut costs.

Researchers studying wearable listening technology now have a new data set to use, thanks to a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Research funded in part by the US Army identified properties in materials that could one day lead to applications such as more powerful data storage devices that continue to hold information even after a device has been powered off.