When DailyWireless previously reported in post #2,000, that Markland Technology, a homeland security company, might use their Plasma Antenna in the stratosphere, we were were only kidding:
…”No satellites. No balloons. Cold plasma gas creates the phased array antenna – and you could sterlize the population!…”
Oops:
Markland Technology announced today its gas plasma technology can be utilized to create secure WiFi data transmission capability for use in business and military applications. WiFi has enabled a wide array of inexpensive communication devices that are utilized in desk-top computing, networking, PDA’s etc. Its biggest drawback is data transmission security. Although manufacturers are working to make interception of WiFi data transmitted via the airways more difficult they have encountered obstacles to solving the problem.
The company believes that one approach to create secure WiFi networks is to incorporate gas plasma transmission antennas within a wireless network environment. Gas plasma antenna technology would allow for highly directive and electronically steerable digital data transmission. This can be potentially achieved via low cost solid-state semi conductor based plasma generators. Because the gas plasma can be rapidly enabled and disabled in less then 1 microsecond time it can be repositioned to point in any required direction or can scan at very high speed. Not only can a plasma antenna reposition itself at very high speed but it can also change its beamwidth and bandwidth as well thus creating spatial and spectral security features which are not presently available with conventional WiFi antenna technology.
Markland’s significant patent portfolio of innovative gas plasma antenna technology can potentially create a new model for secure WiFi data transmission.
In other news, EE Times reports:
“The blimp with the 23-foot-long sensor-studded tether that is now hovering over the Pentagon is about to conduct novel tests of simulated airborne toxins. As the blimp releases a faux poison over the course of the next two weeks, a real-time system designed for first responders will gauge how much of the toxin has been discharged and where, and then predict where the plume will drift and how it will disperse.”
…”The controlled releases will be monitored by thousands of passive ground-based meteorological instruments dubbed “pigs” (for program integrated ground-based samplers). The pigs will take second-by-second readings, time-stamp them and record them onto a fixed media for analysis after the last test on May 15″… (interview ra).
