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Technology

Gigabyte Modems over Electric Lines 194

Posted by CmdrTaco from the dream-lives-on dept.
Ryan Wilshere writes "C|Net has an article on so called 'Power Modems'. They claim they can do Gigabyte transfers over regular electrical line. Dallas-based start-up Media Fusion has won a U.S. patent on a process it says can send data, video and voice over electric wires at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies." They keep on trying. We keep on hoping.
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Gigabyte Modems over Electric Lines More

Gigabyte Modems over Electric Lines

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  • even if they can, i'm willing to bet its just more great technology the average consumer will never see.
  • Since I'm watching AT&T take over my area, buying up TCI and implementing Cablemodems on fiber. Will this save the one thing thats keeping access low? The mom and pop shops?
  • Now if there was only a way to get this kind of speed with no wires at all!

    I dream of an inexpensive, wireless gigabit/sec connection!
  • .. says can send data, video and voice over electric wires at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies...

    I think this right here is just media hype. Ive seen cable modem, and dsl which both keep getting worse and worse. I would have to see some benchmarks and actually see this project completed and tested before I would believe that this works. Every technology has its flaws, and right now its too early to see what this products flaws will be. I know that Canada has a high speed network going on. Why doesnt the US or other countries for that matter follow what the Candians are doing?
  • Don't we see this post every week, It's almost like someone is going throgh slashdot's dirty clothes hamper and pulling out the nastiest pair of gym socks. Is there any way to resurect and repost the logical arguments for and against this technology, so we are finally rid of such nonsense.

  • ...it could finally mean that there will be cool internet appliances all over the house.

    As long as the people involved in the implementation of this don't ruin it by adding silly usage charges, then we will finally be able to read /. whilst listening to geeks in space in full stereo, and all on our fridge doors.

    So, who's for a game of quake? I'll see you by the microwave.
  • Didn't they try and scrap this idea in Britian a while back? I think it was unworkable there.
  • ... they gave up on the idea because it was apparently not cost-effective. Plus there were rumours of it causing problems with radio interference. I'd like to hope that there is a way round these problems, because the infrastructure is already there. All you need is a little black box of tricks and you're on your way.

  • heh heh: they call it electricity :) (Score:3)

    by GC ( 19160 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:03AM (#1466687)
    Dallas-based start-up Media Fusion has won a U.S. patent on a process it says can send data, video and voice over electric wires at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies."

    In other words it appears Media Fusion has patented an electronic signal on a metalic fibre called a wire. They must be so proud of their Intellectual Property :)

  • I just want.... (Score:4)

    by MoToMo ( 17253 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:04AM (#1466688) Homepage
    The UPS that will keep the internet connection live in the event of loss of electricity...

    :) -Dan

  • That's only because their electricity runs on the wrong side of the wires.

    :-)
  • Yeah - they probably define high-speed Internet access technologies as a 9600 modem!
  • This repeats a story from last week I think. The British trial was abandoned for turning street lights into antennas. This idea relies on magnetic effects. But no clues yet as to how good it really is.

    --

  • I've given up hoping! (Score:3)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:06AM (#1466692) Homepage
    It sounds wonderful until you start thinking about it. Communications all boils down to signal-to-noise ratio. The 60 Hz (50 Hz in Europe) power wave is no problem, but what about all the switching noise, corona discharge, insulation arcing, etc? Then you have to get past [around] transformers.

    Also, over long transmission lines signal tends to get spread out (smeared) as the velocity-of-propagation varies. AFAIK, Power lines were not designed with any consideration of Vp.

    Patents do NOT impress me.

    -- Robert
  • A company was created to develop this idea in the UK a year or two back. It was co-sponsored by a regional electricity company (Northern England from memory) and an international telecomms company (NTL?). The company "proved it was possible" but was wound up anyway. That's a pretty good indication that they didn't think it was commerically viable.

    That all seems a bit vague, but the Computer Weekly search engine is even worse than the one in my head :-)

  • Just so that we don't all have to read the entire patent, can someone provide a concise and clear summary of how this "Internet over powerlines" stuff works?
  • I suppose if the power goes out, I won't be able to get to the net.

    Actually, in all seriousness, 2.5GB (is it Gb or GB they're bragging about? I can't see the pictures.) per second is great, but someone has to provide the bandwidth for all of the users. I guess this could work as a backbone-type technology, or maybe like a cable free-for-all.

    One nice thing could be, since it would(should) use the existing electrical infrastructure, a company could bring high speed net access to rural customers just by making the equipment available on its power grid. Maybe I do like the thought...

    Just wait 'til the day someone figures out a way to trip a breaker or blow a fuse in your house when you get fragged in Quake :)
  • I wonder how they have dealt with the issue of some devices attached to the power lines can act as antennas and broadcast the signal to anyone with a radio receiver on the correct frequency. As if we don't have enough electromagnetic noise as it is.

    Then again, even if they have solved the broadcast problem, how do they deal with the random interference that shows up on power lines? After all, take a look at ADSL. AM radio signals can interfere with ADSL.

    If they pull it off (and I'm not holding my breath on that score) and if it is not too expensive for deployment on a large scale (not holding my breath there either), it could prove interesting, though.

  • Another God to pray to. Hopefully people will be able to duplicate what they are doing. I think the idea behind Patents is a good thing, but they seem to go wacko in the computer world where monopolies tend to naturally no matter what you do. The Patents only seem to make things worse. But that's just my take on it.

    Monty

  • Haven't we seen this before? Usually it turns out to be nothing new - either the old trick of using the earth wire for communciations (Which "baby monitors" already do and have done for years) or just electric companies selling pylon space for fibre. This is already done in the UK by Energis.

    You can't provide long-distance communications over electric cabling because Live and Neutral are filtered at the substations and would remove any meaningful signal and the earth wire is local to each house. You could *possibly* set up local loops this way but you don't gain anything - it's the long-haul services and hardware that cost.

  • This *is* exciting! (Score:3)

    by slpalmer ( 6337 ) <slpalmer@gmaiCHICAGOl.com minus city> on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:11AM (#1466700)
    I know many of you are saying how this has been tested, and it failed. In the related story over the weekend, posters were talking about the transformer issues and things of that nature.
    Did anyone read the linked story from the weekend?
    This is not about sending an electric signal over power lines. This is about manipulating the magnetic field which forms naturaly around a wire when you send an A/C current through it.
    This is new. This is exciting.
  • Well... if the power goes out, then unless you have a backup generator, you won't be on the Net anyway since your box won't have any juice...

  • Re:heh heh: they call it electricity :) (Score:3)

    by voop ( 33465 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:11AM (#1466702)
    "Dallas-based start-up Media Fusion has won a U.S. patent on a process it says can send data, video and voice over electric wires at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies."

    In other words it appears Media Fusion has patented an electronic signal on a metalic fibre called a wire. They must be so proud of their Intellectual Property :)

    I guess the keywords you are missing are "at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies". That does make a significant difference.

    I only wish there was more information available on this - it sounds almost too good to be true, and the article is mostly marketing stuff. Can anyone with more EE/transmission-theory-background than mine share some information / references.

    And btw, is "current high-speed Internet access technologies" the 34Mbit/s feed into this place? Then it's a darn fast thing they've come up with.

    *waiting impatiently for more factual information*
  • New company, same claim - they all seem to work "in the laboratory", but get out in the muck of the real world...

    Anyhow, it could be neat - if everyone connected like that we'd have a pretty extensive topology for the web from day 1. All we'd need then is a S**tload of intelligent routers (that can stand 50KV) on the electrical poles.

    If this turns out to be substratable we may end up with only one wire going into the home - carying power, phone, cable, internet, etc. Heh, it's nice to dream isn't it?
  • IIRC, they tried this to provide local loop services but found that they were turning the streetlamps into broadcasting radio antennas. I believe the authorities stamped on it pretty quick when they found out. It's not an insurmountable problem but I think they found that it wasn't worth the cost.
  • Here in the UK also.

    I'm not so sure that the infrastructure is already there. Even if you get 1 terabit on a single segment of wire you then have to share that across all users on a CSMA/CD domain this could be 000s of users. On a CSMA/CD domain you also tend to only get around 30% of the available bandwidth, because of multiple user packet collisions.

    You will also have to have effective "routers" and a backbone connection to distribute the data to the network proper.

    As I see it there are quite a few changes to infrastructure required. The cable people didn't seem to have much probalem installing cable across the country and it is better suited than using existing old cables that might not be quite up to scratch. I'm sure there will be loads of incompatibilities with certain surge protection devices etc.. etc..
  • This may all be vaporware - but even the threat of competition is good. More high speed access options should mean lower prices on ALL high speed access options. That is a good thing!
  • Very true! The Canda Net can see speeds of 80 Gigs/sec and that's with only one color too!! I believe that they are adding another color as we speak doubling that to 160 Gigs/sec. Imagine when we get a dozen colors going!

    But we shouldn't let that stop us from finding other forms of communication. Who knows, this might end up being faster.

  • Here in the UK their are health and saftey rules preventing power and data cables being put in the same coduit. I wonder if this would pose a problem for this kind of technology.

  • he he

    I took high-speed Internet access technologies to mean a 9600 baud modem.

  • Actually, I was only half joking..

    I can dial in now with my laptop when the power's out but the phone is up just fine.

  • If Media Fusion's technology does work, it could radically shake the telecommunications market. Telephone and cable companies have invested billions of dollars to ready their networks for high-speed data transmissions.

    That's a slight understatement. If the technology *does* work, look to see major U.S. Telecommunications companies go screaming to the FCC, demanding the regulation and taxation of the service in the same manner that their lines are. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure what they're going to do, because a technology like this could threaten to put them out of business.

    How practical is it? Does anyone have more detailed information (perhaps information of a more technical nature) about how they're doing it? Is this just a vaporware announcement intended to scare the telcos?

    While the details of actual implementation are vague, if it works, this may present yet another solution to the 'last mile' problem, which I personally see as the last major bottleneck before the true dawning of the (drumroll please) information age. Between this type of easy access to high speed broadband with existing infrastructure, and the high speed wireless stuff we read about a couple weeks ago, we might just get things *properly* wired sometime soon :)

    Anthony
  • OK, I love the hype about connecting to the "internet" at blazing fast speeds ... especially since eventually all of these connections must go into telecommunications circuits that tie into a tier 1 isp and to the Internet backbone, utilizing private and public interexchanges, and the rest of the resources that we all share right now.

    Access technology is worthless without the backbone to back it up, and right now the MAEs and other interexchanges, along w/ private peers and international cables, are our bottleneck points. You can't jam a gigabit pipe into a T1 and expect any performance.

  • I would have to see some benchmarks and actually see this project completed and tested before I would believe that this works Once again, read the related article that was posted over the weekend. If you click the link, and read, you will see that this has been tested, at 19Mbps live video confrencing, between two major cities. (I forget which 2 but it's in the weekend article...)

  • Re:scrap the wires (Score:3)

    by voop ( 33465 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:18AM (#1466721)
    Now if there was only a way to get this kind of speed with no wires at all!

    I dream of an inexpensive, wireless gigabit/sec connection!

    Well, afaik some of the most high-end wireless consumer networks available at this time would be Hiperlan (23.5Mbps). Some information is available
    here [inria.fr] and here [rwth-aachen.de].

    There exists faster wireless networks, however then we're not in the "consumer end" any more.

  • Will this be a weekly event? (Score:3)

    by lblack ( 124294 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:18AM (#1466722)
    Are we going to open up a discussion thread everytime somebody mutters "Power Lines" and "Modem" in the same sentence? This is twice in the last couple of weeks, and no new information has come to light beyond a process patent.

    I mean, really.

    A valid point was also raised about cost for this sort of service. When living in Canada, I paid CND40 for 24/7 CableModem service. Currently, in Ireland, I pay about IRP100 per month for heavy useage over a standard modem. This is because Eircom (formerly Telecom Eireann) was only recently privatised, and there is still little enough local competition. I believe there are a grand total of 20 cable modems in Dublin, all currently being tested (In Terenure, if any Dubs are reading.) At any rate (pun!), isn't there a threat regarding cost in the States? I'm not certain, but I thought the power grid was government property, and I can imagine how much they would enjoy the added revenue provided by fixed-cost high speed internet service. And I don't see an independent startup laying power lines in order to compete, personally.

    This seems like little more than a pipe dream (pun!), particularly for those already enjoying the wonder of Cable Modems and DSL links. If anything, this new tech -- if it ever becomes new tech -- will up your prices and knock your smaller providers out of the market.

    -l
  • As a number of people have already said, this was tried in Britain - specifically, London, I believe. It failed miserably, according to the BBC, partly due to radio emissions (the IP traffic was being broadcast from street lamps).

    However, this is not a new idea. The transmission of electronic data over an electrical power line was first put forward in the mid 1940's, according to Wireless World. The idea was vetoed, at the time, because it was believed that this would allow a dictator absolute power over information. It was deemed essential that wireless methods of communication were predominant.

    In this age of paranoia, suspicion and Government surveilance, I find it fascinating that cable-based communication is actually MORE popular than when the risks were merely speculative.

  • I figure its going to be a while before we (the consumers) actually see anything faster than the current modem set up for a long while.

    There are many problems with cable connections due to interferance, anyone tried to use an appliance (ie a hairdryer) beside their cabled up TV? See what happens? That makes the current cable system fairly unworkable.

    The one thing that is holding the internet back is that everything is expanding, growing and getting faster apart from modems. There will be many companies trying anything they can think of to develop faster access over the comming years, one of them is bound to get it right, perhaps this is it.

    In the original article there is a mention of previous attempts to use electricity wires (they dont specify any in particular, but it must refer to the UK one from some months ago) this company says it will be different, who knows? But based on the amount of calls regarding access speeds that come into the ISP I work for every day, a solution is needed sooner rather than later. If no solution is found, the average consumer will give up on the 'net altogether.

  • I think you are very quick to suggest this is not a worthwhile patent. Gigabyte speeds over cableing that was not designed for the purpose is an acheivement at any time. Getting a clear data single at high bit rate over a cable that caries mains electricity is nothing short of a mirical. Mains electricity is about as dirty as it gets with regard to noise, apart from the 50/60hz of the mains you have to contend with noise from just about evey appliance on the circuit.

    I've read a few reports about this kind of technology before and I'd be interested to know if this has been tested in the field. Getting this kind of system to work well in a lab with high quility cable is one thing, getting it to work in the real world with cable wired in by evey man and his dog of questionable age and quality is another matter. After all, if you have to rewire an area to make it work it kind of defeats the purpose, you may as well lay coax at the same time and be done with it.

  • This is not about sending an electric signal over power lines. This is about manipulating the magnetic field which forms naturaly around a wire when you send an A/C current through it.
    Sounds like just marketing misunderstanding the technology. You can't manipulate the wave surrounding the current without affecting the current. They may however use the wave to read from or modify the current which might be more sensitive than manipulating it directly.
  • A quick troll through the rather vague Media Fusion web site suggests that the signal is one-way, at least insofar as they've managed to solve the "bypassing the transformer" problem. I can't see any indication that the user can send (large amounts of) data. Maybe just a cheap version of Cable TV rather than a cheap Internet?
  • That is two cities. What happens when 10 cities or 100 cities are linked? For example cable modems were great until everyone in your neighborhood got one. Pending on where you live, most cable modem bandwith isnt near what it should be.
  • Don't knock Canadians.. I will assume from your email address that you are British, so I would also care to remind you that Britian is FAR behind Canada in many aspects of "high-speed technology". I remember when i was still in jr. high (around 10 years ago) they were building fiber optic telelphone lines that spanned a huge chunk of our nation.. As I recall, that never happened in England until years later, if it has yet at all. :) Excuse any rudeness in this note as I'm sure you can understand: I feel angered by some cheap pot-shot at my country by an misinformed, ignorant troglodyte. Canadians excell at MANY other things that just hockey, bub, and taking some cheap potshot at one of the World's quieter and more humble nations isn't cool.
  • Will this thing require another plug going to an electric outlet? I mean, come on! The four inches of wall space between my desk and the wall is enough of a fire hazard as it is!

    Let's really solve this puppy: Wireless power, and Inyternet over the power grid!

    We'll all have gigabit Internet connections for the two months before the civilized world drops dead from brain tumors. What a way to go.

    :)

    -Omar

  • One of the power companies here in the UK tried this (albeit at a lower data rate IIRC) and all was going well until it was discovered that street lighting was for some wierd reason producing odd radio interferance which effectively jammed the frequencies used by the ambulance service... Its never been seen since. With any luck, ntl will roll out digital cable TV (and its associated bidirectional cable modem service) soon!
  • The patent [ibm.com] is pretty general, as most patents are, and doesn't go into depth as to how it actually works..

    it mentions a MASER but doesn't really explain it does anyone know what a MASER is?
  • You can't manipulate the wave surrounding the current without affecting the current. They may however use the wave to read from or modify the current which might be more sensitive than manipulating it directly. As IANAEE, I'll take your word on that. My main point though still stands. This is not a direct rehash of what has already been tried, there are new, and intresting concepts being implemented here.
  • I dont want to see another article on this unless it says "taking signups in your area now"
  • Yeah the patent is pretty general. To answer your question, from Newton's Telecom Dictionary: MASER - Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. A device that generates electromagnetic signals in the microwave range, known for relatively low noise.

    Yeah.. I can imagine low noise would be a Good Thing.

  • I'm guessing that they'd setup some system with the hydro company. I mean, they could remove filtering over a certain communication frequency range.
    For my 4th year elec. proj, we're doing something similar (although not nearly the voltage level!). We're going to try to setup communication using frequency filtering over 120VAC house lines. The problems will likely include the stepdown transformer from the power grid. We'll likely setup some sort of freq. block to avoid feeding stuff out of the house. I think that X10 does something similar and I heard rumours of IBM having something similar. If the systems got really popular you'd have to block signals from feeding out of the house into someone elses.
    Anyway, with ours we're hoping to setup some generic remote switching/status boards with some cheap front-end software. I'm assuming it wouldn't be too hard to allow control from the internet (hey there's always telnet :->, not everything is the web!).

    Now with their system I really wonder how they send any info at that rate over the power lines. I mean, the capacitance over long stretches of power line must be crazy. Could you approach it with FSK (frequency shift keying) at high-freq? I'm assuming that the noise and varying properties of the hydro lines would knock out any idea of phase-encoding (someone previously mentioned the idea of signal 'smearing' due to propagation effects). To avoid worring about amplitude drops, FSK is probably the better way to go. Unfortunately at high freq., any capacitance would act as a straight short, unless you balance it out by adding inductance to the lines. (Does anyone know (roughly) Z-angle of the hydro lines?) I know modems used to use QSM(? I think), which used amplitude + phase encoding.
    Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this works!
  • Here in the UK their are health and saftey rules preventing power and data cables being put in the same coduit. I wonder if this would pose a problem for this kind of technology.

    It's using the existing power cable itself (more specifically, the magnetic field surrounding it if I understood their diagrams correctly), rather than adding any additional cable or wiring. So, there's actually no separate "data cable"...I assume it wouldn't pose a problem in that case, although I don't know anything about the UK law specifically.

  • Re:POPs are still the bottleneck (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Consider the following, the telecommunications industry has around twenty percent penetration into the worldwide market, the global electrical distribution network has more than eighty percent penetration. Now imagine if one day, sixty percent of the worlds population had ultra-high speed internet access...ouch!!! Forget the POP's, Ma Bell and UUNet would become a wee bit constipated (sp). Granted this penetration wouldn't happen overnight, but I can forsee many new bottlenecks being created. There is some virute to the slow, slow adoption of network technologies.

  • Media Fusion is a quack... (Score:4)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:37AM (#1466741)
    The Media Fusion thing was posted a week ago in this [slashdot.org] thread. Now that the article linked from that thread is not slashdotted anymore, go read it. The whole article is like one big joke. A couple of the thing they bring up (I forget all the points I LOLed at).
    • The guy is the most brilliant man ever.
    • He has written his own OS, so Windows will not be necessary when his system is launched. No word about how he managed to write an OS all by himself, or how he plans to overcome the problems of all other (closed) alternative OSes.
    • He has been nominated for the Nobel price. Actually, the Nobel Prize is not like the Academy Awards, pretty much any proffessor can nominate somebody, so it might be possible. The article goes on to say that he will probably win it (just like the hundreds of inventors of patented hacks that have done so before him.)
    • His invention, really just a hack that saves us time in not having to draw fiber even if it does work as stated, will change the world. The article features a guide to which companies like MS, HP, TI, and Apple will survive (FYI, MS and HP won't, Apple will "probably be more adaptable", and TI will surge getting a license to make the chips needed).
    • The guy is actually a philantropist. Which is why he has patented the technique, and has no plans to implement any of this himself, but only get rich off licensing.
    • He has figured out how to use the same technique with the earths magnetic field, to communicate over the whole world. Yes, it actually says this.

    Go read the article, I'm trolling in the least. It's fucking ubelievable.


    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • Apparently there is a company in the UK looking at providing access to the 'net in homes via the gas and water supplies. Something about using the conductivity of the pipes...

    [Happosai]
  • Umm, hello? DSL works perfectly over here at 1.6Mb/s. There are technologies which are substantially faster than analog modems, and consumers already have access to them. The only problem is to get that service to all customers, which is a problem area with at least DSL and cable for the time being. Perhaps LEO satellite access companies (Teledesic etc) will change the picture.

    I don't think using power lines to transmit data will work. It has been extensively studied before by the British, and it flopped. Plus, the fact that the company did not even bother testing it on the actual power grid before letting out all the hype tells lots about the competency and the motive of the company. Had someone really discovered a feasible way of transmitting data over power lines reliably, VCs and bigger corporations would have queued to fund them.
    --

    BluetoothCentral.com [bluetoothcentral.com]
    A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
  • You're right: I am trivialising what might be a worthwhile invention, but come on, I'm sure I get one of these "new physical media" stories every day and yet here I am with a little leased line at work and modem access at home - things haven't changed.

    As I have noted in other posts the Gigabyte speeds may have to be shared across thousands of users or perhaps even tens of thousands of users, and then you need a higher tier infrastructure to route the information to the network proper.

    Because of this, I find the technology a waste of time and unlikely to get implemented. ISPs here in the UK tend to have an aggregate backbone bandwidth of around 15-25Gbps, not much point giving their users terabits to play with is there?

    I guess I was trying to be funny, in light of the stupid patents that have been granted lately. No offence to the company involved...
  • If you read the patent, which someone linked nicely last time, the gist I get is that they are using the existing magnetic field of the power line to act as a waveguide. This is a different approach than what I think the other attempts that have been made.
    Unfortunately EM is one class I slept through and still got an A(I think it was the curve that helped me out).
    However, there are some serious problems:
    1) Even if everything works all snazzy, they still have discontinuities at substations/transformers which would require extra equpiment at each one. This might be okay because that would likely be a good place for routers anyway and a handfull of clip-ons to a powerline for ~100 mile 300 Ghz waveguide connection is VERY economical.
    2) For microwave frequencies, they are obviously not sending the signal through the wire. It has to be either a) in between the stranded outer and solid inner wires b)around the wire(seems real lossy to me) c) in between the magnetic field and the wire(or in the magnetic field between wires). This last one jives with their patent, but I can see all kinds of headaches. These fields are going to spatially move with line transposing that is sometimes done and they will temporally move(wrt the microwave frequencies). This may require line sync/bursting and perhaps more "repeaters" along the line.
    3) The last biggest hurdle that I see is survival in what is almost the harshest of environments. Control-house equipment(not on the line) is designed to survive 8kV, 500A/M, 35V/M, +85 to -40C, sometimes condensing humidity. All of these devices will need industrial-temp parts, conformally coated, magnetically shielded, to survive long. However, because of their sensitive nature, you may be shielding away the very signal you are trying to use.

    I'll applaud them if they make it work, but I won't invest any of my money :)
  • >He has figured out how to use the same technique with the earths magnetic field, to communicate over the whole world. Yes, it actually says this.

    I have, too - and I'll give the secret away for free 8^)

    Ever see that amateur radio support area in the Linux kernel? That's right! You too can manipulate the Earths electro-magnetic field for long range communications!!!

    Spark-gap transmitters (while highly frowned upon), are also quite effective ;^)
  • Browsing through their Q&A section, I see "will use proprietary hardware and software", ya I really see them having Linux support for this proprietary shit anytime soon.

    They're also pretty vague about who's funding them and which companies are helping them etc etc... I think they're hiding too many things.

    I'll believe it when my linux box is hooked up to it.
  • something about sending signals through the magnetic field around the power cable. Call me a skeptic, but

    Of course it was around the the conductor - all electronic signals are transmitted as changes in the magnetic/electric fields around a conductor - thats basic physics.....
  • Sure, we'll just haul new fiber, redesign all of the public and private interexchanges, and upgrade all of the routers across the globe ...

  • Patent Number 5,982,276 [ibm.com] Magnetic field based power transmission line communication method and system

    They are not exactly transmitting the data by injecting it into the line - that method is limited by bandwidth, SNR and regulations to a few megabits per second. They are using a MASER to transmit a microwave RF signal that uses the magnetic field AROUND the powerline as a waveguide. This will not work all the way down to your socket but powerlines hanging from pylons could be used by utilities to compete with fiber.


    ----
  • It's not a case of "removing" the filtering, you'd have to build something to either specifically pass through a certain signal or build a sort of inverse notch filter which filters everything but a certain frequency. This isn't easy - filtering is basically done by bunging a very high AC capacatance on the line to smooth out any spikes or sags.

    I don't think their technology is based on this however, I think they've found something that's immune to "normal" filtering.

  • Re:POPs are still the bottleneck (Score:3)

    by netpuppy ( 77874 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @04:55AM (#1466756) Homepage
    Yeah, I've been curious about the penetration of DSL and cable into the American internet market ... nobody has compiled hard numbers, that I know, but it would be interesting to find out what effect broadband has had on backbone traffic to date.

    Even with all the tier 1 ISPs hauling giant circuits, interexchanges are still hosed. This will be the limiting factor, I think.

  • As a former TCI employee I can assure you that the cable companies have had a lot of pains getting the infrastructure set up. The cable techs haven't changed much in the past 10 years, but the technology they are dealing with is barely in the grasp of most engineers. Until the connection right to your house is fiber, there will be interference problems, and even then, are there enough highly skilled techs to handle it.
  • IBM's patent search engine turns up patent number 5,982,276 [ibm.com] that refers to "Magnetic field based power transmission line communication method and system".

    One should read the patent copy that's there at IBM's site before commenting upon this subject- it's interesting (and required for comments) reading for this subject.

    I'll thouroughly examine the patent copy and post an analysis of the same later today...
  • I looked at the patent ffrom the IBM patent server. As a physicist, I can say that most of the contents are mumbo-jumbo.

    It is important to remember that for a patent to be valid, it must be detailed enough for one 'skilled in the art' (patent office terminology) to build the device based on the patent (i.e. it must be enabling). A patent (the word, of course, means open) is supposed to open up a technology... you can't simultaneously have something under wraps and patented. You either have a trade secret or a patent, not both!

    I would consider myself to be reasonably skilled in the arts associated with this type of work (PhD in Physics, Caltech, 1983) but the patent is certainly not enabling.

    Worse, I suspect that it isn't based on any real physics. The discussion of exciting atomic states in the magnetic fields surrounding a wire reads a lot like the kind of language one sees in perpetual-motion patents to try to cover up the complete lack of any real possibility of success.

    If I were making investment advice, I would certainly not recommend buying into this one.
  • OK, my EE speciality is not in power, but I've read some about it. One of the big problems with data over power lines is the sheer length of them. Case in point is the Pacific Intertie that runs between Washington and Southern California. The power types decided that even 60Hz was too inefficient to use because the long line would radiate too much power away. (They convert the power to high voltage DC for the Intertie and use great big inverters at the destination. DC doesn't have losses.)

    Since this is supposed to be a highspeed connection, the only way to keep it going over long distances is to have a zillion little repeaters. I'm not sure of the distances involved, but I'd be surprised if you could get more than a few kilometers under ideal conditions. Probably need them every 100 meters in big cities. Wouldn't that be fun to build and maintain....
  • And such are coherent, single frequency oscillators that exhibit a lot of unique characteristics.
  • Seems as if this might be shared bandwith like cable modems (boy they are fast.... as long as there aren't 500 other people all using up your speed). If this were to work, and work well enough that lots of people started to use it (though I have serious issues with it - see below), everybody slows down again. Not good.

    As for my concerns about the actual technology - I have enough problems keeping the power clean in my house without there being lots of extra noise intentionally placed on the line. I'm one of those people who hates every power deviation that introduces noise into my stereo or video equipment. I'd liketo put a lot of effort into making sure that my 120vrms 60Hz signal is nice and clean, without a lot of spurious crap.

    With that in mind - the isolation transformers, surge protectors, backup supplies (some which constantly filter the line), and other cute little wall warts which filter line noise would be detrimental to the aforementioned product - but a nice power spike from a vaccuum cleaner, fan starting/stopping or a garage door opener would probably not be in the best interests of the rx/tx section of this technology. There are many ways you can filter out the lower frequencies, but the spikes are inherently high frequency, with broad enough scope to disrupt the high-freq signal to the power-line modem (or whatever you might call it). Sure, you won't notice a brief .25 second delay in your service every now and then, but if somebody turns on a blender or coffee grinder, you're pretty much SOL...
    Not to mention repeated spikes just aren't good for electronics equipment...
  • It turns out they have a retired gulf war vet as head of government relations. So if the telcoms come screaming, this vet, who happens to carry the title "Rear Admiral" may be of some use. He also worked in BOTH THE REAGAN AND BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS people. If it comes down to a gov't showdown, and Bush Jr. is in charge, my bets are all on the Admiral.

    Offtopic but true: Rear Admiral Grace Cooper invented the compiler. If this Admiral is half the person she was, we may see some innovation coming.

    -Ben

  • Patent! (Score:1)

    by Otto ( 17870 )
    The article about this last weekend contained this link to a patent:

    Patent! [164.195.100.11]

    Looked different, I'll give it that.



    ---
  • >They convert the power to high voltage DC for the Intertie and use great big inverters at the destination. DC doesn't have losses.)

    Seems backwards to me... Edison always wanted DC for power distribution, but AC wond out because it is far less lossy. For a really long wire (i.e. power distribution line), the DC resistance is *way* higher than the AC impedance. The electrons have to travel from point A to point B for DC (let say 1000km for this example), while at 60 Hz, the electrons bounce back and forth, going far less distance and losing less of their potential energy (read: voltage) along the way.

    I haven't heard about the Pacific Intertie, but hey, they could be doing this... though I somehow doubt it.

    Just my $.0004^.5
  • Just a quick followup - web info says it's a 500kv AC line...
  • Unfortunatly for my little European country, the phone network/infrastructure is pathetic (we are charged per minute for all local and internet calls, no flat rate fees either, the fastest connection someone can get with a 56k modem is in the high 40's, the average is significantly slower). The capability to introduce DSL is there but the phone comapny is dragging its feet, if it is introduced the cost will be too prohibitive for the average home customer, who have already been priced out of the ISDN market. The phone company, which is basically a monopoly was recently privatised/ipo'd and is more interested in keeping shareholders happy than providing a worthwhile data service.

    All of this, and believe me, we are not the only country in this situation, is why there is so much interest in adapting existing conections into the home to avail of faster interenet access.

  • More like, the United Parcel Service that will keep the Internet live by toting around punch cards containing individual IP packets in case the electricity fails. ;-)
  • The whole thing reads like a system that operates off of near-field interactions. It sounds like they're trying to turn the surface of the transmission wires into a waveguide in the same manner one would turn an insulated wire into a G-line. Someone that's not entirely versed in what near-field EM acts like might come up with some of the stuff that shows in the patent copy.
  • Come on, give me a break! Programmers will believe *ANYTHING* if it looks like it will increase their download rate! A fundamental ramification of Maxwell's equations, transmission line signal attenuation, means that this "Power Line Internet" will be only a few feet long before the 300-GHz signal disappears into oblivion! Sheesh!
  • You can read it online here [uspto.gov]
  • Think of how microwaves propagate down a waveguide- literally like water through a pipe!. What it appears that they're doing is turning one of the wires being used for an AC transmission line into something resembling a type of open waveguide, a G-line. I don't know if they can actually do this, but it's an interesting premise- one that I'd like to see actually attempted.
  • Did you even bother to read any of the articles?

    The patent is for technology which transmits data
    through the magnetic fields surrounding power
    lines, NOT through the power line itself. From
    what I could glean on the Net, the physicist who
    invented this took a new approach and completely
    bypassed the problems of transformers and filters
    and everything else which affects the actual
    electric signal.

    Not being a physicist myself, I can't evaluate
    the technology. Apparently, others on slashdot
    are physicists who are intimately familiar with
    magnetic fields/microwave interactions over the
    power grid and should call this guy up and let
    him know his idea is daft.

    Of course, the whole thing could be a scam,
    but what I've seen is consistent and doesn't
    contradict what I do know about physics.

    Bolie IV
  • In the US the power grid is generally owned by the private power companies. If they could run intenet bandwidth, they would be happy to. Like most coddled monopolies, they won't have a clue what the value of their product is. Unless they can provide the bandwidth service for $US20+ISP fees, they're out of the game.
  • Several confusions here.

    The thing that matters for losses is voltage. The higher the voltage the less loss. AC won out early on because it is easier to convert AC to higher voltages and back again.

    Today DC is starting to come back in because we now have technology to change voltages efficiently for DC, and very high voltage AC has a problem with arcing that is less bad for DC. A 1MV DC line
    has a peak of 1MV while a 1MV AC line has a peak of 1.44MV and so can arc further.

    Radiation losses are not an issue for AC power because the frequency (50 or 60 Hz) is so low. It is an issue for high-speed data transmission over power lines.

  • Now, don't you feel stupid that you didn't patent it and use it to kill Microsoft and get the Nobel price :-).

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • I was looking at home automation stuff a little while back and read a book about it that talked about different ways that had been implemented. One of the problems of going over the power lines for home automation is that it has to go back out of your house to the transceiver, thus making it less secure. The same think I would guess is true with net access. So anyone could put a tap in your transceiver and watch your activities. Similar to cable modem's security problems, though this would only be your closest neighbors instead of the entire neighborhood.
  • . The cable techs haven't changed much in the past 10 years, but the technology they are dealing with is barely in the grasp of most engineers.

    Absolutely, the cable tech who came to my house to connect my cable modem was pretty clueless about how the whole thing worked, I got the impression that he'd basically gone to a couple of workshops the company (TCI now AT&T) put together. He really couldn't answer any of my questions about how it worked, and he didn't know what a cross-over cat 5 cable was.

    I finally told him to run a cat 5 line to X point, plug in his laptop, let me make sure it works, then to leave and I'd take it from there. So he did that, I loaded Slashdot on his laptop (I was pretty sure this guy wouldn't have it cached) and sent him on his merry way. I set up my hub and ran some lines to my roomies' computers and was surfing half an hour later.

    My point? This guy couldn't hook two computers to each other if he had to, he was a guy who knew how to hook up coax connections, and they gave him a laptop and taught him how to plug cat5 connections together. How hard would it be to get some people (college students?) with a basic understanding of networking?
    ---
  • I can almost buy that you can use the magnetic fields of the powerlines as MASER waveguides, but I saw nothing in the patent that explained how they solved the transformer problem.

    There also appears to be a problem with propagation control. Will this be pure broadcast? That might work more easily, but it will eat the bandwidth very quickly. I'll guess that even if they can use the magnetic fields of high tension lines as waveguides, they have a long way to go before they invent the MASER router.

  • Don't forget those of us with UPS systems. The one under my desk at home doubles nicely as a foot-warmer as well. I keep a second one in the basement keeping the hub, cable modem, and NAT box up and running too, I can keep using the net for a good 15 minutes without power.
    ---

  • It can be done. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm a little fuzzy on this stuff, it's been a while...

    But what he is working on has more to do with the magnetic portion of the EM spectrum than the E part of it. If you read the article in the Dallas News, it basically states that the technology is based on the fact that a lightening strike can be 'heard' across the entire Power Grid of the United States Electrical companies (which are all connected to each other for power loading reasons)

    If you are still a doubter, do some research on Tesla who had the same basic concepts outlined back in the 1920's. He was one smart cookie, but no one understood what he was trying to do. It's not about normal data transmission and it's not about quantum communications either..

  • Seems backwards to me... Edison always wanted DC for power distribution, but AC wond out because it is far less lossy. For a really long wire (i.e. power distribution line), the DC resistance is *way* higher than the AC impedance. The electrons have to travel from point A to point B for DC (let say 1000km for this example), while at 60 Hz, the electrons bounce back and forth, going far less distance and losing less of their potential energy (read: voltage) along the way.

    A little clarification here. The electrons don't have to 'travel' from point A to point B. The 'average' electron drift speed for say, a 1 AMP circuit is on the order of centimeters per hour. What 'travels' is the signal, and it travels just as fast(the speed of light) for an AC or DC circuit.

    And, IANEE, but one of the BIG reasons they use AC current is because its ALOT easier to transform. The huge big wires you see have a tremendously high potential at low current, which results in less loss over the line. The high potential can then be easily transformed to high potential/low current for domestic use. I don't think DC is any more 'naturally' lossy than AC, in terms of impedendance.

    There theres all this stuff about the capacitative/inductive effects of the circuit, and I think that might be another reason why they use AC, but again IANEE.

  • Whoa, whoa, cool it, dude!

    I'm Canadian, too, and he got me riled up until I actually want and read what he was referring to. He wasn't knocking the Canadian network, he was pissing on the excerpt from the Media Fusion ad.

    It was Media Fusion's claims of high speed connections that he was comparing to 9600 Baug, not the Canadian high speed network.

    Although granted, he could have made that a bit clearer...
    --
    - Sean

  • On basic physics. (Score:4)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Tuesday December 14, 1999 @08:01AM (#1466804)
    Of course it was around the the conductor - all electronic signals are transmitted as changes in the magnetic/electric fields around a conductor - thats basic physics.....

    Um, no.

    Signals in most circuits are trasmitted as a flow of current _within_ wires, driven by an electric field gradient _within_ the wires (called "voltage"). Electric fields outside the wires try to move current between the wire and anything nearby, but this is an unwanted side effect, stopped by something called "insulation". However, the electric fields also result in capacitive coupling between nearby wires, which causes something called "capacitive cross-talk". This is minimized by keeping wires far apart and minimizing the amount of parallel surface area of conducting regions.

    As a side effect of the current flow, a magnetic field is set up both around and within the wires. The current flowing within the wire and the magnetic fields around the wire are intimately connected; you can't have one without the other, and they interact very strongly with each other. You can't "transmit information in magnetic fields around the wire" without interacting with currents in the wire too - the magnetic field is _caused_ by local currents in the wire. In most systems, magnetic fields are an unwanted side effect. As there is mutual inductance between any two wires in a circuit, the magnetic fields caused by current in one wire will set up currents in other wires. This is called "inductive cross-talk". It is severe only for wires that are very close to each other, or that have a particularly vulnerable geometry.

    For an excellent book on the basic physics involved, I recommend "Fundamentals of Physics, Fifth Edition", by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. Another good reference is "Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Extended Version" by Tipler.
  • They are not exactly transmitting the data by injecting it into the line - that method is limited by bandwidth, SNR and regulations to a few megabits per second. They are using a MASER to transmit a microwave RF signal that uses the magnetic field AROUND the powerline as a waveguide.

    This is bogus.

    Electromagnetic fields do not interact with each other. They couple with charged particles, which couple back to the field. A "magnetic field" wouldn't be acting as the waveguide - the wire would. Over a single wire with no interference, this would work quite well. However, the actual power grid does not meet this specification.

    This will not work all the way down to your socket but powerlines hanging from pylons could be used by utilities to compete with fiber.

    The problems with this include, but are not limited to:

    • Reflections from ends of wires on the grid.
    • Reflections from any split on the grid (place where one wire forks off from the primary wire).
    • Inductive coupling to... everything.
    • Noise injection from... everything.


    Power networks were not designed with eliminating reflections in mind, and were not designed for noise rejection. Cable - which is shielded coaxial cable - _is_ designed for both of these, and so has much higher ultimate bandwidth limits. It too behaves like a waveguide at high enough frequencies, and it's shielded. Optical fiber can beat both hands-down - it's a waveguide for an EM signal with a frequency _many_ orders of magnitude higher than radio and microwave signals.

    Summary: Bandwidth limits and signal quality problems make this a not-very-useful technology.
  • Of course, Britain is notoriously strict about
    broadcast regulation. Isn't that the place where
    every TV must be licensed, and there are actually
    spooks who spy on people looking for unlicensed
    TV's?

    Maybe "turning street lights into antennas" is
    something America would tend to tolerate.

    We tolerate the sulfur lamps in the damned things,
    after all. We'll even tolerate wasting millions of acres of woods for the poles.


  • Did you even bother to read any of the articles? The patent is for technology which transmits data through the magnetic fields surrounding power lines, NOT through the power line itself.

    I'm afraid that this is a meaningless statement, most likely invented by their marketing departments. Click on "User Info" above to see my previous posts which cover this in more detail.
  • Signals capable of transmitting data in GBits/sec range shall be radio in GHz range or even optics. Electricity is an electro-magnetic phenomean and therefore manipulating the magnetic field interferes with the current in the conducter. And as explained many times before; high frequency signals cannot pass through transformers that by nature function as low-pass filters.

    When using even higher frequency-signals (even up to optical signals) there would be problems with the variation of the dielectric constants of material surrounding the wires. Some use platic insulators, some paper/oil, some use air, etcetera. These changes would diffuse or reflect signals. And once again it wouldn't pass the transformer.

    What do they claim:

    They claim they can use the electric utility-network to transmit signals in GBit/sec range over thousands of miles. (OK, this could be done by using the network as antenna and sending very powerfull radio-signals of several kW. Only one transmittor per continent: not very useful).

    They claim to use the magnetic field, not the conductor. First ask yourself: what would happen when we have no current? No signal? (this happens 50 times per second, in USA 60 times). Why they claim this: because it is different and can even confuse the average EE that think in currents instead of magnetic fields.

    They claim to have patents. Well, I'm not impressed. In USA even perpetual mobiles can be patented (see www.entropysystems.com).

    They claim they will demonstrate their system somewhere in 2000 by sending HDTV-signals over thousands of miles of electricity-network. This will be done to find enough investors to make the 300 million dollars they need 'to speed up the development'.

    Now I understand, poor investors.
  • One possibilty is, since air is made of atomic particles and may be able to be held in place with a strong magnetic field. Then the MASER, injecting a uwave signal into the system will modulate the magnetic moments of the atoms. These atoms would then resonant in sync causing the message to propagate down the wire.

    There are several assumptions being made here that turn out not to hold:

    - Firstly - EM fields _do_ interact with the atoms within them. This is what causes ordinary transmission of light, and is why light looks like it's travelling more slowly when it's passing through, say, glass. You also get the dielectric and magnetic permeability constants of materials from this kind of interaction. You're not going to get much more than this.

    - Secondly - Magnetic traps only hold non-ionized atoms at _extremely_ low temperatures. A magnetic field strong enough to affect atoms in any unusual way (beyond just setting up normal paramagnetic/diamagnetic effects) would have to be ludicrously strong, and could not be generated by any terrestrial device (Prof Dawson: "Well, maybe in a degenerate star...").

    In summary, everything that will happen when microwaves interact with normal matter is well-understood, and does not help with signal transmission in the way that you are looking for.

    You seem to have an interest in physics, which is always a nice thing to see; click on "User Info", above. My first post on "basic physics" contains citations for two physics texts, which are very interesting and useful.
  • Why do you assume that I do not read articles? That isn't very charitable. Read it I have. Agree with it I do not. :)

    Magnetism and electricity are inseparable. You cannot manipulate one without changing the other. More to the point, electrical noise begets magnetic noise. Or put it is way, if they can separate electricity and magnetism, it's Nobel-prize winning, almost Unified Field Theory stuff. I'm highly suspicious.

    Now, they may want to use the runner (steel support cable on mid-voltage lines) to carry signal to rural areas. If it isn't grounded, that may work at 1 Mbps but will have lots of induced noise from electrical transients. 10baseT ethernet will reputedly run over barbed wire!

    -- Robert
  • My EE prof worked as a researcher for Southern California Edison for 20 years and he said that the reason they used DC for that power link was to avoid phase synchronization problems.
    --

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