Sensors Everywhere? Cheap RFID in Building Ducts; Drones Will Carry More, Too
A
research team at North Carolina State University has used a building
ventilation duct to at least triple the normal distance that radio waves emitted
from passive RFID tags can travel over open space, as reported separately by
Computerworld and R&D Magazine. The discovery means that a small,
inexpensive RFID tag could be used to wirelessly transmit data from any
temperature sensor, smoke detector, carbon monoxide monitor or a sensor to
detect chemical, biological or radiological agents in a large building,
according to Dan Stancil, one of the main researchers and head of the
university's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Using the RFID
tags with electronic sensors could be “immediately economically viable” because
it would mean the wiring and the labor to install the wiring would not be
needed to connect a building’s various sensors. The research will be published
in the September issue of Proceedings of the IEEE.
And
speaking of sensors in everything, in its efforts to develop an unmanned aerial
system capable of detecting boosting ballistic missiles, the U.S. Missile
Defense Agency (MDA) is focusing on a sensor pod that could fly on existing
UAVs, rather than a new, integrated UAV design. General Atomics Reapers, with
the Raytheon MTS-B electro-optical/IR/full-motion video sensor, have proven the
ability to detect and track a boosting missile from greater than 621 miles with
“remarkable resolution,” the commander of the MDA told reporters at the Space
and Missile Defense Conference. MDA is doing the groundwork to see what
qualities an objective sensor would need and how the data would be integrated
into the larger sensor cueing and command and control architecture. The
ultimate goal is to link all sensors and shooters into a networked system. A
specific ABIR fleet of UAVs is cost prohibitive, so now the focus is on
designing the pod, which could be flown on an Air Force system such as Reaper.
Global Hawk also could be an option.
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