Lifeboat Foundation

The future of laser communications looks bright and boundless.

In groundbreaking news, MIT announced on November 30 that engineers at the Lincoln Laboratory had broken the record for the fastest laser link from space with its TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system.

The TBIRD payload, launched into orbit in May 2022, has sent down data at a speed of up to 100 gigabits per second through an optical communication link to a ground receiver in California. The new record is around 1,000 times faster than traditional methods. This means that sending information to and from space will see tremendous improvement with this new technology.

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Internet connectivity is charging ahead with 900,000 gaining access daily. By 2032, 8 billion will be online. What are the implications?

Satellite Internet connectivity, faster feeds and speeds, and accessibility will transform our society over the next decade.

The field of epidermal electronics, or e-tattoos, covers a wide range of flexible and stretchable monitoring gadgets that are wearable directly on the skin. We have covered this area in multiple Nanowerk Spotlights, for instance stick-on epidermal electronics tattoo to measure UV exposure or tattoo-type biosensors based on graphene; and we also have posted a primer on electronic skin.

Taking the concept of e-tattoos a step further, integrating them with triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), for instance for health monitoring, could lead to next generation wearable nanogenerators and Internet-of-things devices worn directly on and powered by the skin.

In work reported in Advanced Functional Materials (“Triboelectric Nanogenerator Tattoos Enabled by Epidermal Electronic Technologies”), researchers report a tattoo-like TENG (TL-TENG) design with a thickness of tens of micrometers, that can interface with skin without additional adhesive layers, and be used for energy harvesting from daily activities.

Google is shutting down Duplex on the Web, its AI-powered set of services that navigated sites to simplify the process of ordering food, purchasing movie tickets and more. According to a note on a Google support page, Google on the Web and any automation features enabled by it will no longer be supported as of this month.

“As we continue to improve the Duplex experience, we’re responding to the feedback we’ve heard from users and developers about how to make it even better,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch via email, adding that Duplex on the Web partners have been notified to help them prepare for the shutdown. “By the end of this year, we’ll turn down Duplex on the Web and fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day.”

Google introduced Duplex on the Web, an outgrowth of its call-automating Duplex technology, during its 2019 Google I/O developer conference. To start, it was focused on a couple of narrow use cases, including opening a movie theater chain’s website to fill out all of the necessary information on a user’s behalf — pausing to prompt for choices like seats. But Duplex on the Web later expanded to passwords, helping users automatically change passwords exposed in a data breach, as well as assist with checkout for e-commerce retailers, flight check-in for airline sites and automatic discount finding.

Conventional light sources for fiber-optic telecommunications emit many photons at the same time. Photons are particles of light that move as waves. In today €™s telecommunication networks, information is transmitted by modulating the properties of light waves traveling in optical fibers, similar to how radio waves are modulated in AM and FM channels.

In quantum communication, however, information is encoded in the phase of a single photon – the photon €™s position in the wave in which it travels. This makes it possible to connect quantum sensors in a network spanning great distances and to connect quantum computers together.

Researchers recently produced single-photon sources with operating wavelengths compatible with existing fiber communication networks. They did so by placing molybdenum ditelluride semiconductor layers just atoms thick on top of an array of nano-size pillars (Nature Communications, “Site-Controlled Telecom-Wavelength Single-Photon Emitters in Atomically-thin MoTe 2 ”).

The Federal Communications Commission issued a key authorization to Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Thursday to launch up to 7,500 next-generation satellites in its Starlink internet network.

“Specifically, we grant SpaceX authority to construct, deploy, and operate up to 7,500 satellites operating at altitudes of 525,530, and 535 km and inclinations of 53, 43, and 33 degrees, respectively, using frequencies in the Ku-and Ka-band. We defer consideration of SpaceX’s proposed use of E-band frequencies and tracking beacons,” said the order.

A small satellite developed by MIT engineers has set a new record for data transmission between a satellite and Earth. The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system used a laser to beam huge amounts of data at up to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps).

This data transmission speed is far greater than most connections you’ll get between the sky and the ground. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet offers up to 500 Mbps to Premium customers, and even the International Space Station’s data transmission tops out around 600 Mbps. That makes TBIRD up to 200 times faster.

The key difference is that most satellites communicate with ground stations via radio waves. TBIRD, on the other hand, uses laser light, which can carry up to 1,000 times more data in each transmission. Lasers come with their own hurdles though – the beams are much narrower, requiring more precise alignment between transmitter and receiver. And the light can be distorted by the atmosphere, leading to data loss. So TBIRD was designed to overcome these issues.