Recently the Harvard SEAS official website said that the Internet of Things (IOT) may generate more than $14 trillion in economic activity by 2025, but many in the industry believe that significant policy changes will be required to enable the needed connections of assorted devices while avoiding interference if this is to be the case.
Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Draper are developing a new approach to assembling nanoscale hardware that could overcome this challenge by creating narrower filters through use of inductors made from “NanoLitz” wire to reduce interference with other nearby transmissions.
Draper’s Amy Duwel, technical director for the NanoLitz project, explained that “this could free up spectrum by reducing channel bandwidth that the Federal Communications Commission now assigns to different users.”
Harvard SEAS reported that “the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory are funding the NanoLitz work as part of the Atoms to Product (A2P) effort to find new ways to assemble nanoscale materials that cannot be accomplished with current techniques such as those used in the semiconductor and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) industries or through chemical synthesis.”
According to Harvard SEAS, Draper is simultaneously developing a “microfluidics-inspired approach for mechanically braiding the tiny wires that would be scalable to large numbers of wire at high throughput” and “leading the efforts to model and design the NanoLitz wire to optimize electrical performance.”
Draper’s David Carter, NanoLitz program manager, added, “The improved signal performance could also enable devices to transmit up to five times more data per channel, receive much fainter signal levels, and overcome interference that disrupts GPS signals.”
To learn more about the NanoLitz approach, click here.
