Record High Frequency Achieved 141
eldavojohn writes "Researchers at UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science managed to push our control of frequencies to another level when they hit a submillimeter 324 gigahertz frequency. As any signal geek out there might tell you, this is a non-trivial task. 'With traditional 90-nanometer CMOS circuit approaches, it is virtually impossible to generate usable submillimeter signals with a frequency higher than about 190 GHz. That's because conventional oscillator circuits are nonlinear systems in which increases in frequency are accompanied by a corresponding loss in gain or efficiency and an increase in noise, making them unsuitable for practical applications.' The article also talks about the surprising applications this new technology may evolve into."
In other news, dogs in the area go berserk (Score:5, Funny)
Like making your dog's head explode.
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In other news..... (Score:3, Funny)
Take that Mythbusters!!!
Re:In other news, dogs in the area go berserk (Score:5, Funny)
Like making your dog's head explode.
The article talks about the military being interested in acquiring the technology so they can see through peoples clothes, and that was the best you could come up with?
That's weak.
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Re:In other news, dogs in the area go berserk (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news, dogs in the area go berserk (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:In other news, dogs in the area go berserk (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd say "You must be new here." but obviously you aren't.
For the record I'm happily married with kids too. Fortunately, there are women out there who can appreciate nerds for what they are.
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Re:In other news, dogs in the area go berserk (Score:5, Funny)
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Like making your dog's head explode.
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red utility tape (Score:2)
M$ was waiting for this ... (Score:2, Funny)
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Nooo! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Funny)
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How they did it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How they did it (Score:5, Informative)
This sounds a lot like a phased-lock loop [wikipedia.org]. And yes, from the article, it appears as though this does have pretty good scalability. TFA said 600 GHz is achievable. 324 GHz a nice because fog is transparent at that frequency.
Re:How they did it (Score:5, Funny)
So in twenty years time cars will have an anti-fog display on the windscreen (which will have the ability to switch between transparent and display mode), which will make travelling through fog much safer at high speeds (let's just accept that cars will not have an auto-drive mode by then, eh?).
On the downside, many crashes will occur because pedestrians on the sidewalk will appear to be naked! Perverts will be making the school run even worse as they hang around outside schools. And we'll all accept it as the price to pay for safety and anti-terrorism requirements.
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It doesn't sound like a PLL to me; a PLL has VCO in it, and this is a VCO, but the VCO is just the oscillator part.
I.e., where's the phase comparator?
It sounds more like a quadrature oscillator with 4 outputs. Oscillators have an inherent need for a 180 degree phase shift, and a quadrature oscillator gives you two outputs 90 degrees out of phase. This one gives you 4 outputs 90 degrees out of phase, which seems a bit of a trick.
It may be some variant on the Bubba O [google.com]
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>This sounds a lot like a phased-lock loop.
There's actually no indication of feedback at all here (which is the whole point of a PLL). In general, actually, feedback slows systems down. They do mention that they are using a VCO -- also used in PLLs -- but I get the impression that the purpose here is to, say, generate frequency modulated radio signals; such a modulator would be an open-loop system.
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Perhaps the technique is standard frequency mixing [wikipedia.org], a standard technique used in practically every radio receiver these days. It's basically a three termi
Re:How they did it (Score:4, Interesting)
Aye, the heterodyne radio receiver. Yeah, I could see them using a mixer! That doesn't mesh with what's described, but, then, (unless I am missing something), what's described doesn't make a ton of sense:
How can any linear system create an output frequency unequal to one of the input frequencies? I could see rectification as providing a frequency doubling -- but that's old, old news, generates horrid output, and is probably not what's referenced here.From TFA:
So maybe the article gets it wrong, and you're right?
If somebody else could shed some light on this, that'd be cool.
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One significant point here is that the FCC only claims jurisdiction up to 300 GHz.
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Long story short: a full-wave rectified sine wave will have 2x the frequency of the original. Even if the original is a PURE SINE WAVE. The output however is no longer a pure sine wave. You can get a pure sine wave if you have the right filters, but you're goin
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Hardly the highest frequency! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hardly the highest frequency! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hardly the highest frequency! (Score:4, Funny)
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Or the frequency of reciprocations of his right hand... which are, likely, sinusoidal.
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Stop lying.
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Re:Hardly the highest frequency! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Hardly the highest frequency! (Score:4, Informative)
However, both the Slashdot title ("Record High Frequency Achieved") and summary ("...managed to push our control of frequencies to another level ...") do seem imply that frequency control has not been possible at frequencies that high before. So, it's important to point out that while it's a record, it's only a record within context. (Records within context are fun; you can do anything with them. For example, I hold the bicycle land speed record for all persons with my SSN.)
In any case, it's *not* totally different. Both are examples of frequency control, which is it's own discipline that spans precision timing and applications in all frequency ranges, from RF (on chips and in free space) to optical (on chips, in fibers, and in free space) and beyond.
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Wesley Crusher: Of course! We can defeat the aliens if we hydrogenate that wormhole near the stellar core whatchamajigger, since superconducting SIS mixers and Jopsephson junction local oscillators achieve a phase-locked operation up to 500GHz.
Geordi LaForge: That could destabalize the laser beams at frequencies exceeding 1 PHz (10^15 Hz) which have been precisely controlled, phase locked, and tuned to have frequencies that
That's nothing (Score:4, Funny)
Short amount of time??? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's nothing (Score:2)
This makes me wonder ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This makes me wonder ... (Score:4, Funny)
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As mentioned in one of the other replies, there are lots of measurement devices for very high frequency stuff. I'm sure they used something far more precise than this, but here's a couple relatively simple ways to measure a signal that you can't capture on a scope: - use a frequency counter to count the number of zero crossings against a known, calibrated, time-base - use a signal multiplier to multiply by a lower-fr
So you're saying... (Score:4, Funny)
+1 funny
-8 bad movie
-9000 overrated
Sorry, been done before and topped... (Score:2, Informative)
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One thing that sticks out is that this CMOS variation seems to allow for finely tuned control of the frequency, which allows them to use it regularly and reliably, but I could be way off.
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T-rays (Score:4, Informative)
Suffice it to say this is an area of active research that may have many, many applications.
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Then someone would have to go to the trouble of inventing a metal detector to detect my knife.
Oh wait...
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Of course, now we have the T-rays we really want the C- and A-rays to go with it!
Re:T-rays (Score:4, Funny)
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Since these can see through clothing...
oh, man, I can't bring myself to say it.
Anyway, tinfoil! It's not just for hats anymore!
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If aliens are calling... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
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My flashlight achieves orders of magnitude higher frequencies in a snap!
Hell -- my body emits radiation that's orders of magnitudes higher. Not as high as your flashlight (at least not in any significant amount) but still much higher. I haven't found an effective way to modulate it at a high rate of speed, however.
The remote for my TV also uses frequencies orders of magnitude higher than those in this article. And it even modulates the signal! Perhaps they should not think quite so much about electronics, and think more about optics ...
Is this really new? (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/11/18482
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pulse (Score:1)
it keeps them out you know
They've been beaten years ago. (Score:1)
Not what I expected (Score:1)
"submillimeter" (Score:3, Interesting)
ouch (Score:1)
Another menacing blow to the psyche of cutoff-loving never-nudes everywhere. Time to buy plastic underwear.
Tricorder (Score:2)
Sounds like extension of the push-push oscillator (Score:3, Informative)
The basic principle behind a push-push oscillator is that two out-of-phase signals of fundamental frequency f_o are combined such that the fundamental signal and the odd harmonics cancel, while the second harmonic at 2*f_o add constructively. In the case of a push-push oscillator, you only need two signals 180 degrees out of phase. This could be generated with a differential VCO.
Using a push-push oscillator is a well known technique for increasing the frequency of oscillation of a VCO beyond the fMAX of a transistors at a given process node.
The only disadvantage with push-push oscillators is that you end up losing a lot of power as the second harmonics's power will always be much smaller than the power in the fundamental frequency of the VCO.
ET pissed (Score:1)
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new clothes (Score:2, Funny)
Antenna Design (Score:1)
Big deal (Score:4, Funny)
I can create an even higher frequency for a fraction of the cost.
(Turns on flashlight)
I can even send information.
(Blinks flashlight)
I admit the data capactity needs work, though.
So What? (Score:1)
I guess it could be a new Ring Tone.
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Considering that it's electromagnetic waves rather than sound waves, nobody under 40 will be able to hear it either. Not with their ears, anyways.
And the `Mosquito' that you're alluding to isn't so imperceptible to adults as people would lead you to believe. I have no trouble hearing it, and I'm only 38. I don't think that two years will make the difference ...
Perhaps for Bender ...
In any event, at a high enoug
Frequency of what? (Score:1)
If it's Faps then that must have been some mighty bad chaps they had at the end... Either that or they were able to invent some extremely low friction lube...
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2. Slashdot has a 24 hour story submission turn around time (I submitted a Garry Kasparov storry and they didn't post another submitted one on same topic til the next day)
3. It is a tragedy and saddening, but again more people will die in Iraq today (and tomorrow) and in the scope of things it isn't the end of the world as we know it and may not be on topic with Slashdot at this point. Too much speculation of what happened as it is...
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It is a tragedy and saddening, but again more people will die in Iraq today (and tomorrow)
The latter is, sadly, not news. The former is. Honestly, the original poster's comment was the first I'd heard of it.
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Nice try (Score:4, Interesting)