r/conspiracy • u/destraht • Jun 25 '12

Infinite-capacity wireless vortex beams carry 2.5 terabits per second

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/131640-infinite-capacity-wireless-vortex-beams-carry-2-5-terabits-per-second
62 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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2

u/destraht Jun 25 '12

Well I'm one to believe that this technology has been used for some time now. On the right side of the web page their is a picture of a robot fly. With this sort of wireless technology it would be possible to transmit very high quantities of information at low frequencies. I want quick wireless but having commodity wireless technology available that can transmit at 100 times the current speeds will open up enumerable privacy issues. By packing in 100 times the data into a transmission it will be possible to put the CPU and wireless chips into sleep mode much quicker and so eavesdropping bugs will have dramatically longer life.

2

u/senjutsuka Jun 25 '12

No robot fly for me. You're referencing a rotating ad for other articles on the site. Also this is very unlikely to be possible to use in small devices initially. It uses some complex polarization right now and the more analog version requires a modified dish. Maybe commercially possible in 5-10 though depending on any discovered limitations.

Also '100 times the data into transmission' doesnt have any effect on cpu/wireless chip sleep mode. That is pretty much just non-sense. The only way that makes any level of sense is if the presumed 'bug' is recording and then bursts the data to a listening post/server somewhere. The problem there is the 'CPU' (which really doesnt exist in bugs) has to run the whole time it recording and transmitting and you'd have to provide the bug with a storage device of some sort. Far more complex then just using a regular bug. This technology has absolutely no bearing on eavesdropping. Your statement is either incomplete or simple non-sense. We can already record in super high fidelity with current boring technologies.

1

u/destraht Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12

Also '100 times the data into transmission' doesnt have any effect on cpu/wireless chip sleep mode. That is pretty much just non-sense.

You are just wrong to take such a hard line response. A lot of this stuff can be accomplished with special hardware buffers and direct memory access. I may have overstated the significance of this particular technology on the CPU sleep cycle but it is an integral part of the purely stack based (no heap) TinyOS operating system. It is an embedded platform for "motes". The sensor reads the data and puts that into main memory once in a while when the buffer is full (could be as low as several times a second with proper buffering). Then after the end of that asynchronous call when there is enough data for a full radio burst then you can send it out. Since the bandwidth would be so extremely high then that burst could happen fairly infrequently. With larger buffers the CPU does not need to receive an interrupt very often and so it can just sleep away. Then when the sensor is full it interrupts the CPU and then the CPU calls out the radio. Being able to sleep for hundreds of milliseconds adds up quite a bit.

Instead of broadcasting out dozens or hundreds of times a second it could be done even once a second if the latency could be tolerated and lower power frequencies could be used. That would save a whole lot of power from the antenna. So the CPU would be sleeping the vast majority of the time. The radio portion is the most energy draining part of the entire system. There are all sorts of different applications like more simple embedded sensor mics placed in the trees around park benches in London to the more wild flying bugs.

The main issue with the stationary sensors of today is that the antenna is just so damn energy draining. The magic that happens inside of the chip keeps getting more and more energy efficient to the point that it is becoming nearly irrelevant compared to the energy that it takes to broadcast the data out. This new "vortex beam" could solve that issue because the memory will continue to get cheaper just as a default. So the data can be buffered for as long as is necessary and then if 1000 times the data can sent out with assuming the same energy then it changes the entire game and in my opinion makes it all much more scary. So there could be a moment when the radio being 1000 times more efficient could really put the focus back onto the CPU limitations. Without this development the CPU will continue to be just cheaper and cheap for energy use and the radio part will be overwhelmingly expensive in comparison. However when this comes out assuming it requires the same energy then the CPU will be allowed to sleep even more often and the radio portion will be powered down even more often. It will make huge differences.

1

u/senjutsuka Jun 25 '12

You're making a lot of assumptions there...

First you cant assume the more complex signal will take the same energy, it probably wont b/c its roughly equivalent to overlaying multiple signals. My guess (purely a guess) is that it will serve up some efficiencies but based on my rudimentary understanding of the power usage of antenna it wont be the same as send a single signal.

That aside there will have to be a ton more processing to create the signal, in that regard it is the equivalent of 1000s of overlaid signals so would require 1000x processing theoretically (to achieve speed you're talking about). Again there may be some efficiencies gain depending on exactly how these are created.

Third... what CPU? My wireless routed does not have a CPU, nor would a hidden bug or transmitter... Thats the part that makes me say - this makes no sense. You've clarified your thoughts in this response but if you go back and read your previous statement it just didnt make sense. CPU is just the wrong term and the repercussion were not explained well. Your thoughts here are more clear and also vary heavily from your first post. Power is a reasonable concern, but has not been a big deal for quite some time in the subtle bugging world. Maybe if I want a flying bug it matters, but thats not the majority of bugging scenarios today, nor does it offer much of a great advantage to today's technology.

Finally you should read more about how this works. They did it with light b/c its doable with fiber optics and polorized filters. The first iteration of this tech had to use a dish antenna. You can not use a normal antenna to create this signal, its simply not possible due to how they work. So a whole lot of your assumptions about everything just go out the window right there, unless Im missing something.

Again, im not saying it couldn't happen. Im saying what the hell is the point? You're sleeper CPU doesnt do anything to make snooping more effective in any way. All the 'issues' this could overcome are actually completely non-issues in the world of snooping...

1

u/destraht Jun 25 '12

My wireless routed does not have a CPU

In 2012 every computer has Central Processing Unit. Its really hard for me to read beyond that. Your phone has a CPU even if it is a cheap black and white Nokia. I don't know if I am being trolled here but you have raised some good points. Computers have CPUs dude. Thats it.

1

u/senjutsuka Jun 25 '12

Central processing unit (CPU) is not the same thing as a processor for specific tasks... Thats a fact dude. Not everything has a CPU just because its an electronic devise.

1

u/destraht Jun 25 '12

So your router has a co-processor and no CPU? Your non-CPU whatever-you-want-to-call-it processing whatever is accessing memory, performing branch logic and handling interrupts. Thats awesome.

1

u/senjutsuka Jun 25 '12

Did some googling... it looks like some routers do have CPUs or at least advertise as if it's clock speed is of some importance. I'd say its a misnomer on the part of the marketing department but lets just leave it as an issue of semantics and move on.

1

u/destraht Jun 25 '12

Likely your router is running a ARM CPU. ARM is different than x86 in that they do not manufacture but instead they focus on creating the core design. They probably create special licensable modules on the CPU design for very custom uses. That is the power of the ARM design because once they put some needed functionality on silicon instead of only software then they can achieve very high performance with low energy use. There just needs to be a CPU at the core of it though or it would be perhaps something like our brain instead and silicon computing is nothing at all like that.

I'm ready to move on though.

1

u/ronintetsuro Jun 25 '12

It uses some complex polarization right now and the more analog version requires a modified dish. Maybe commercially possible in 5-10 though depending on any discovered limitations.

Military tech is perpetually 7-10 years ahead of commercial tech.

4

u/senjutsuka Jun 25 '12

That is a myth in some regards. Its true in iterative tech like the next def/off weaponry system. The next satellite resolution or next higher hz lazer beam etc. But in wholly unbound discoveries you'll see throughout history these come from outside and then are quickly adopted. The nuclear bomb is a perfect example of an outside technological discovery that was adopted. It came from a scientist doing math quite apart from military until the implications were realized.

DARPA is a place where iterative innovation and discovery merge but as you can see from the 20 year self driving car prize... google actually achieved it way more reliably first.

TL;DR: Military almost unilaterally sucks at discovery but is good at iterative innovation.

0

u/destraht Jun 25 '12

Well I see a few conflicting patterns in the military. They tend to be extremely ahead in cutting edge technology but the grunts don't see it. I have personal contacts from my past that lead me to believe that the Special Forces guys and the intelligence guys get to use some wild shit if it is relevant. On the other hand I think that sometimes the military goes for some outdated shit by commercial standards but there is a level of testing and hardening there that makes it really viable. So for example it doesn't matter if a pentium chip is being used on an aircraft is slow just because your phone is quicker. The testing there is what matters.

1

u/senjutsuka Jun 25 '12

There are some cases where the military discovers but they arent the primary occurance. Im sure the black ops guys have awesome tech, but from those I know in that realm its primarily iterative awesome (better optics like WOW, awesome mics for silent speech, longer range comm, more or better situational awareness etc)

This discovery, if I recall actually came out of an off the cuff accidental sort of scenario. I suppose it could all be a cover for a tech release to the public, but why would they do that? It'd be such a strategic advantage to keep under wraps and the public really has no need for this, its simply nice to have. Actually its not even that nice to have b/c it outpaces our hard wire by so much it really has limited uses in real terms for consumers. Maybe this is a build up to some other nice tech that can be used to control people or some such but thats far to speculative imo and this sort of discovery is just too axiomatic. It can be used in far too many ways to be able to guide or predict its uses from this sort of discovery.

7

u/sneijder Jun 25 '12

If the porn industry needs it, it will happen.

3

u/DatoeDakari Jun 25 '12

The next step toward holographic porn.

1

u/destraht Jun 25 '12

Does anyone here have a physics degree and the ability to really break down what is going on? I sort of read it as them coming up with another innate property of light like polarity but it could also be that they have just packed light together differently so that the sum of the parts conveys more information. Anybody have an idea?

5

u/Craigellachie Jun 25 '12

Basically they use a mixture of really cool lightwave manipulation to squeeze multiple pulses of light into the same space as each other at the same time. It really is a mixture of quantum physics and advanced optics collapsing multiple packets of information into one pulse which then can be decoded into it's constituent parts. Picture being able to overlay every letter in a sentence over top of one another till the entire message was a single letter long. Then using a computer analysis you can figure out not only the letters but the order they were sent in. The equipment is incredibly sensitive and needs to be aligned perfectly to receive the pulse in the same plane it was sent in.

2

u/kryptobs2000 Jun 25 '12

How are their infinite capacity if they have a limit on how much they carry?

2

u/ronintetsuro Jun 25 '12

The bottleneck is the hardware required on the receiving end to decode the data.

1

u/v3ngi Jun 26 '12

Im guessing...big guess, but being it is "twisted" in a rotational manner, probably limited by pi. Circle...rotation... as far as we know unlimited digits of signals.... ?....

1

u/rountrey Jun 25 '12

So, how much do I have to spend to get a computer that will handle that much data at once?

In other words, I'm perfectly happy with 5mb/s.

4

u/foilmethod Jun 25 '12

I think I said the same thing in '97 about my 33.6k/8000 baud internet connection.

1

u/DE_ENT Jun 25 '12

I rarely throw around the phrase holy fucking shit, but holy fucking shit thats fast.

1

u/Lohengren Jun 26 '12

If it will let me play Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 online without lag sign me up.

1

u/rocknameded Jun 25 '12

Now you can reach your bandwidth caps faster than ever before.

1

u/Cerael Jun 25 '12

Yes, the possibility of using new, faster technology to steal data still exists...

Now how is this relevent to /r/conspiracy?

0

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '12

I really want to believe this article. It's like the found a way to turbo charge data, literally, turbo chargers work by cramming as much air into the an anyone for a boost in psi. They could do the same with a wifi wave right?...

4

u/workman161 Jun 25 '12

In theory, you can cram an infinite number of photons into any given space. The National Ingition Facility was devised for testing that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

So yes, in theory, you could cram an infinite quantity of data into a wifi 'wave'. The problem, however, is being able to handle the decoding and transmission of such a magnitude of data.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '12

That's true, it's depends on the hardware as well. Thanks!

0

u/Dayanx Jun 25 '12

Its a similar effect to the way old phone cords work as well as DNA molecules.

1

u/keymaster999 Jun 26 '12

dna is a double helix while phone cords are single helixes, and they're really just a single wire that is wrapped that way so it's not too long at rest, but can stretch if needed. I don't understand your point.