The last couple of weeks were action packed. Two weeks ago, I spoke at the Texas Wireless and Microwave Circuits and System Symposium at Baylor University in Waco (see my post “Demystifying Electromagnetic Superposition“). Last week, I joined the Q-Track team in Orlando for RFID Journal Live, our industry’s leading […]
Electromagnetics
174 posts
The Q-Track gang is in Orlando, Florida this week for RFID Journal-LIVE, the world’s premier conference and exhibition focused on radio frequency identification (RFID) and its many business applications. The tradeshow is underway April 8-10, 2014, at the Orange County Convention Center, located in Orlando, Florida. More about that later. […]
This afternoon I will be presenting an invited talk at the 2014 Texas Symposium on Wireless & Microwave Circuits & Systems at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In my talk, Demystifying Electromagnetic Superposition (slides), I will examine the interesting behavior of electromagnetic waves when they superimpose or interfere with each […]
Blogging has been taking a back seat to everything else in my life, lately. This week, though, I have a variety of interesting and exciting developments to share. Today’s news is an update on the indoor location company I co-founded, Q-Track. The good news began a few month ago in […]
This insightful piece from the Huffington Post describes how the friendship of electrical pioneer Michael Faraday and landscape artist J.M.W. Turner influenced Turner’s work – Mario Livio: When Science Met Art.
Here’s more good press for NFER® RTLS pioneer, Q-Track. Nuclear Engineering International reports: Workers in six US nuclear power plants are being trained in a virtual radiation environment so that they can develop skills to keep radiation exposures low. The Q-Track radiation worker training system combines a software program that can […]
Employing Q-Track’s patented Near-Field Electromagnetic Ranging (NFER®) technology, Collision Avoidance Non-Line-of-Sight (CANLOS™) systems allow robots to detect and avoid colliding with their human co-workers even when when direct line-of-sight may be blocked. NFER® signals use low frequencies that penetrate better and diffract around obstructions that may block conventional RF and […]
Q-Track’s A-Team traveled to upstate New York the other day to show off NFER RTLS for tactical training at Tactical Conference 2012. Here’s the press release: May 01, 2012 – Verona, NY – Q-Track Corporation, the pioneer in Near-Field Electromagnetic Ranging, will demonstrate NFER Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) products in and […]
Any student of electromagnetics knows the story – Michael Faraday devised the ingenious concept that electric and magnetic effects were due to “fields” pervading space. Applying this simple concept, he was able to devise and demonstrate the phenomenon of induction, discovering the physics that gives rise to electric motors and […]
Today’s Google Doodle honors Heinrich Hertz (1857-1893), discoverer of radio waves, on the 155th anniversary of his birth. Heinrich Hertz was not the first to experiment with radio waves. Contemporaries such as Charles Hughes and Oliver Lodge performed similar work in parallel. What set Hertz apart, however, was his tenacity […]
I’m passing on another press release from my company, Q-Track. The Q-Track team at I/ITSEC is having a great show and wanted to share this video, filmed yesterday, of their live demonstration. ORLANDO, FL – December 1, 2011. Q-Track’s NFER Real-Time Location System (RTLS) demonstration wowed attendees during the first […]
[iframe:src=”http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=uwbantennacom-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0068URL6M” frameborder=”0″ width=”120px” height=”240px” scrolling=”no”] Next-RF’s Model 310C UWB Planar Horn Antenna is now available from Amazon. This ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna approximates a constant aperture. Thus, the time domain voltage signal closely approximates the time domain behavior of the incident fields themselves. In addition to use as a UWB impulse […]
Today, I’m passing along a press release from my company, Q-Track. Swing by Booth 2737 at I/ITSEC in Orlando this week to see a demonstration of NFER RTLS. ORLANDO, FL – November 28, 2011. Q-Track Corporation, the pioneer in Near-Field Electromagnetic Ranging, will be demonstrating NFER Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) […]
I came across the following by Vannevar Bush, and thought I’d pass it along. This is one of the clearer descriptions of how electromagnetic energy works that I’ve run across. In fact, the very definition of the radiation during a transient is a matter of some concern. Radiation in the […]
DecaWave has joined the ranks of companies offering UWB-based real-time locating systems. Here’s a video showing a demonstration of their system. DecaWave RTLS and ranging demo – YouTube.
Time Domain has released a compact (3″ x 4″) UWB radar module with 1.4GHz bandwidth at a 4.3GHz center frequency. From their website: Time Domain’s PulsON® 400 (P400) Monostatic Radar Module (MRM) is a fully coherent, short-range radar that packs 1.4 GHz of RF bandwidth in a small, low cost, […]
Last week, Huntsville, AL-based Q-Track Corporation promoted Stephen A. Werner to Chief Executive Officer. Werner previously served as Chief Operating Officer. He brings over twenty-five years of executive experience to Q-Track, including previous service as VP and General Manager for AAR Summa Technology. Werner also held senior positions with Sanmina-SCI […]
This afternoon, I’ll be presenting at the Rocket City Geospatial Conference on the subject, “RTLS Enhancing Nuclear Safety.” Radiation exposure of workers in the nuclear industry poses a significant health hazard to the workers, and imposes substantial costs to the utilities that employ them. Q-Track has developed two Real-Time Location […]
The story seems an improbable fiction: a famous Hollywood actress invents a secret technology so far ahead of its time that it takes decades for the full potential of her idea to be recognized. Yet in 1941, actress Hedy Lamarr, collaborating with pianist George Anthiel, invented frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum technology. The […]
Last month, I spoke at the 2011 International Microwave Symposium in Baltimore in a workshop on innovative and highly accurate local location systems. My slides are now available online. This workshop presentation explains basics of near-field physics and near-field RF links. Then, this presentation explains the implementation and performance of […]
This just in from Information Week (via Dwayne Hendricks, WA8DZP on Twitter): Ultrawideband Takes Us Closer To Star Trek Tricorders. Is it a miraculous UWB radar that monitors your heart rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol? Alas, no. It’s a UWB body area network. Ultra-wideband works great when you have lots […]
Saturday July 9 marks the centennial of John Archibald Wheeler’s birth. Wheeler pioneered the theory of nuclear fission along with Niels Bohr. He contributed to the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. Afterward, he led a revival of general relativity theory including coining such memorable terms as “wormholes” and […]
“Standard” gain horns are the customary way to make precision measurements, but they tend to make a poor reference against which to compare antenna performance, particularly for ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas. The ideal reference antenna for use with UWB systems is a linear phase antenna with increasing gain to approximate an […]
Today’s post is on an obscure side note in antenna history. Henry Jasik is perhaps best known in antenna engineering circles as the Editor of the indispensable Antenna Engineering Handbook. However, he also played a minor role as a witness in the McCarthy Hearings. Transcripts of the McCarthy Hearings (1953-54 […]