RF-ID Tags are small, cheap, and can operate indefinitely without batteries. With or without legislation, the technology — destined to replace the ubiquitous bar code — is developing at a remarkable pace.
Privacy advocates like NoCards.org say the tag technology, which can precisely identify an individual, will likely be abused. Bills introduced in Utah and California, require that consumers be informed if RFID tags are placed on products and that those tags be deactivated before they leave the store. The California bill requires a consumer’s consent before personal information can be collected by RFID or sold.
Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) last month unveiled the Ubiquitous-Sensor Network (USN) plan and said it would spend a total of $162 million USD until 2010 to develop and commercialize RFID technology nationwide. The government’s mid-term goal is to attain 5 percent of the global RFID market by 2007. [Thx, Larry]
Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends reports RF-ID sensors may reduce accidental “Friendly Fire”.
‘Friendly fire’ accounts for more than 10 percent of wartime casualties. Now, engineers from Sandia National Laboratories have created a radar tag sensor to prevent it. The sensors, attached to military vehicles and personel, would be recognized as ‘friendly’ by an attacking aircraft. The U.S. Army will test the sensors this fall. If the results of the tests are as successful, these radar tags may be carried by every soldier in the future.
The sensor, dubbed “Athena“, is not a radio transmitter. Instead, the sensor creates synthetic radar echoes. The tag sees the radar s transmitted pulse and sends it back to the radar, except it adds a little bit of data to the echo. The radar’s receiver recognizes the tag s unique data signal and can then place an icon on the pilot s screen.
The researchers have shown the sensor can work with multiple radars and multiple aircraft.
Darpa wants to start planning for a blimp, three times the size of Goodyear’s, that would keep watch over an entire city.
Hovering at 70,000 feet for months at a time, the ISIS airship (short for Integrated Sensor Is Structure) would use a giant, flexible radar antenna to give, in the words of Darpa program manager Larry Correy, a “dynamic, detailed, real-time picture of all movement on or above the battlefield: friendly, neutral or enemy.” Darpa won’t begin soliciting research proposals until 2005. To stay aloft, ISIS may need batteries that weigh one-tenth what today’s cells weigh.
Space Based Radar may be the ultimate tracking tool. It is being proposed for the United States with an initial launch in 2012. SBR will grow to a constellation of spacecraft to provide rapid-revisit coverage of the entire Earth’s surface and augment air and ground radar. The Air Force intends to award two 24-month study contracts in May 2004.
Northrop Grumman’s 12-meter (40 foot) reflector, designed by Astro-Aerospace (right), was successfully deployed aboard Boeing’s Thuraya spacecraft and Japan’s new MBSat (above) for cellular video delivery. Harris recently completed an extremely large, space-based radar antenna designed to address tactical tracking of moving targets on the ground.
DARPA’s Innovated Space-Based Radar Antenna Technology (ISAT) is developing huge antenna concepts. SBR’s will need advanced solar and nuclear power systems, however.
According to DARPA, JSTARS, the troop and vehicle tracking system used aboard E-8C aircraft, uses a 7 m long antenna. To maintain the same resolution as JSTARS, an antenna would need to be 57 m long at Low Earth Orbit. “At Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), say 10,000 km (6214 miles), the length increases to approximately 320 m (1000 feet)“.
The Arecibo Radio Telescope, the largest curved focusing antenna on the planet, is 305 Meters.
DARPA has designated the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate (AFRL/VS) to execute the ISAT Demonstration System, located at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico. Kirtland is also home of the mysterious “ebomb“, the High Powered Microwave (HPM) weapon often rumored but never seen.
The ebomb can reportedly deliver a massive pulse that’s (briefly) comparable to the output of Hoover Dam, about two billion watts, disabling most electronics.
Dr. Good, the recently retired director of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate, utilizes one of the largest telescopes in the world, combining electro-optical satellite tracking with a research and development facility for the Directed Energy Directorate.
