Communications

Test Your Knowledge About Small Satellites

Small satellites are revolutionizing space-based services due to their affordability, faster development cycles, and flexibility. Take this quiz to test your knowledge about smallsats.

AI-Powered Military Communications at the Tactical Edge

On this episode of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast, Fuse Integration CEO Sumner Lee is the guest to discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining how military communications and networks are leveraged in contested environments.

Implementing Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance is based on condition monitoring, anomaly detection, and classification algorithms, and integrates predictive models which can estimate the remaining machine runtime. Read on to learn more about it and how to implement it.

Utilizing Acoustic Signals for Autonomous Swarm Formation in Micro-Robots

Animals like bats, whales, and insects have long used acoustic signals for communication and navigation. Now, an international team of scientists have taken a page from nature’s playbook to model micro-sized robots that use sound waves to coordinate into large swarms that exhibit intelligent-like behavior. Read on to learn more.

A New Window into Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

Between 50 and 100 kilometers (30-60 miles) above Earth’s surface lies a largely unstudied stretch of the atmosphere, called the mesosphere. It’s too high for airplanes and weather balloons,...

How Much Do You Know About the History of Television?

Television was king during the second half of the 20th century — what do you know about the history of the technology?

New Tech May Lead to Smaller, More Powerful Wireless Devices

A new class of synthetic materials could herald the next revolution of wireless technologies, enabling devices to be smaller, require less signal strength and use less power.

Unfurling Antennas Let Tiny Satellites Do Big Things

Satellite builders now have the option of using small, collapsible dish antennas made by Tendeg LLC of Louisville, CO, which developed them with funding and cooperation from NASA, along with the patented technology developed at JPL. Read on to learn more.

How Much Do You Know About Radio Jamming?

The deliberate blocking of or interference with wireless communications, radio jamming has been around for decades. How much do you know about radio jamming? Find out with this quiz.

HydRON: Transforming How Data-Collecting Satellites Communicate

In this in-depth interview, Antonio Sturiale, Director of Telecom Domain in Italy at Thales Alenia Space, discusses HydRON and the company’s approach to optical communications as well as the role it will play in upcoming lunar, Martian, and deep-space exploration missions.

Fast Steering Mirrors: Enabling Stable Laser Communication in Satellite Networks

As optical systems become more integrated into communication, sensing, and imaging technologies, FSMs will remain a key enabler of speed, precision, and stability in next-generation photonic applications. Read on to learn more.

NIST Tackles Wireless Industrial Systems

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is working to provide best practice guidelines to help manufacturers use wireless systems. Read on to learn more about it.

NASA Demonstrates Software ‘Brains’ Shared Across Satellite Swarms

New NASA technology works within satellite swarms. This technology, called Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA), allows individual spacecraft to make independent...

Navigating the Transition: Understanding RSS-102 Issue 6 Updates and Implications

Radio equipment marketed or sold into Canada must be certified with ISED Canada, the Canadian equipment authorization regulator. Radio transmitter equipment must be certified to the latest issue of Radio Standards Specifications (RSS). How well do you understand RSS-102 Issue 6 updates and its implications? Take this quiz to find out.

Understanding the Vulnerability in Wireless Backhaul Networks for 5G

A research team led by Rice University’s Edward Knightly has uncovered an eavesdropping security vulnerability in high-frequency and high-speed wireless backhaul links, widely employed in critical applications such as 5G wireless cell phone signals and low-latency financial trading on Wall Street. Read on to learn more.

Nanoscale Device Points the Way to Future Wireless Communication Channels

In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team of Caltech engineers reports building a metasurface patterned with miniscule tunable antennas capable of reflecting an incoming beam of optical light to create many sidebands, or channels, of different optical frequencies. Read on to learn more.

New Wearable Communication System Can Transmit Data Farther than Wi-Fi

A group of University of Arizona researchers has developed a wearable monitoring device system that can send health data up to 15 miles without any significant infrastructure. Their device, they hope, will help make digital health access more equitable. Read on to learn more.

A Digital Twin Can Predict What Data Wireless Users Will Need Before They Need It

Researchers have developed a new method for predicting what data wireless computing users will need before they need it, making wireless networks faster and more reliable. The new method makes use of a technique called a “digital twin,” which effectively clones the network it is supporting. Read on to learn more.

Enabling High-Capacity Space Communication

Researchers have achieved data rates as high as 424Gbit/s across a 53-km turbulent free-space optical link using plasmonic modulators — devices that uses special light waves called surface plasmon polaritons to control and change optical signals. The new research lays the groundwork for high-speed optical communication links that transmit data over open air or space. Read on to learn more.

Backup System Can Keep an Airplane on Course When It Cannot Rely on GPS Satellites

Dangling from a weather balloon 80,000 feet above New Mexico, a pair of antennas sticks out from a Styrofoam cooler. The antennas are listening for signals...