Communications

Engineering researchers have developed a method to use signals broadcast by Starlink internet service satellites to accurately locate a position here on Earth, much like GPS does. It is the first time the Starlink system has been harnessed by researchers outside SpaceX for navigation.... Read more

While many employers have delayed their office returns until next year, T-Mobile is pushing ahead with plans to bring workers back at least part-time before the end of October.... Read more

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, present a unique optical amplifier that is expected to revolutionize both space and fiber communication. The new amplifier offers high performance, is compact enough to integrate into a chip just millimeters in size, and—crucially—does not generate excess noise.... Read more

If you've ever emailed a resort in Fiji or Vanuatu about that long-awaited holiday, it's likely your email traveled through an undersea internet cable. Such cables carry much of the internet traffic around the globe, in conjunction with underground fiber connections, satellites and microwave links.... Read more

Of the 8.2 million homes and businesses active on Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) in July 2021, 77% are now reported to be on a broadband plan that delivers speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps). This is plenty to accommodate a typical household's needs for video streaming... Read more

A team of researchers at Alphabet's research and development company, X, working on what has been named Project Taara, has successfully set up a laser-based system for beaming the internet across the Congo River at speeds up to 20 Gbps. The group has described the project on the X blog... Read more

Researchers in UC Santa Barbara professor Yasamin Mostofi's lab have enabled, for the first time, counting a stationary seated crowd using WiFi signals, and without relying on people to carry a device. The technique, which also counts through walls, needs only a wireless transmitter and receiver outside the area of... Read more

Cities and urban counties across the U.S. are raising concerns that a recent rule from President Joe Biden's administration could preclude them from tapping into $350 billion of coronavirus relief aid to expand high-speed internet connections.... Read more

As cities around the world continue to urbanize, there is a greater need to expand and optimize existing spaces. Cities have accelerated looking into how underutilized rooftop spaces might contribute to climate action, food production, and other purposes. Sustainable roofs, such as those with greenery and photovoltaic panels, can contribute... Read more

In June, the W-Cube nanosatellite began its journey aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral to polar orbit. About a month later, it was placed in its orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers and has now been successfully transmitting test signals to Earth in the Q and W... Read more

Wide Area Networks (WANs), the global backbones and workhorses of today's internet that connect billions of computers over continents and oceans, are the foundation of modern online services. As COVID-19 has placed a vital reliance on online services, today's networks are struggling to deliver high bandwidth and availability imposed by... Read more

Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a computer scientist at the University of California, Irvine, presented her findings last week at the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference regarding her concerns about vulnerability in the global internet communication structure. She believes that a major coronal mass ejection could wreak havoc on international internet communications... Read more

The Senate's bipartisan infrastructure bill makes a $42.5 billion bet that the government will overcome an obstacle that has long plagued efforts to connect most Americans to the internet: notoriously inaccurate maps showing where they can get a signal—and where they can't.... Read more

Consumers of today's 5G cellphones may have experienced one of the following tradeoffs: impressive download speeds with extremely limited and spotty coverage, or widespread and reliable coverage with speeds that aren't much faster than today's 4G networks.... Read more

A team of researchers at Korea's LG Electronics, working with a group at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, has successfully sent data 100 meters over a 6G signal. Officials at LG have posted details of their test of the next step wireless transmission technology on their company news page.... Read more

T-Mobile on Monday acknowledged a breach of customer information after a hacker group claimed to have obtained records of 100 million of the operator's US customers and offered some of the data on the dark web.... Read more

Google and Facebook on Monday unveiled plans for a new undersea internet cable connecting Singapore, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia.... Read more

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a modeling technique that can save time and money in estimating how to configure wireless communications systems to share the same transmission frequencies. The NIST model reduces the number of measurements needed to estimate reliable configurations by about... Read more

The Senate's $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan includes a $65 billion investment in broadband that the White House says will "deliver reliable, affordable, high-speed internet to every household."... Read more

Increasing the amount of trains on Europe's tracks to replace other modes of transport could help reduce CO2 emissions and air pollution. But fitting more trains requires a serious rethink of how trains brake and could move across the track using cyber-secure radio and satellite navigation.... Read more

Signal blindspots in built-up urban areas could soon be a thing of the past thanks to research at 5G/6GIC.... Read more

The prediction of future wireless traffic volumes using artificial intelligence (AI) would allow communication systems to automatically adjust network resources to maximize reliability. KAUST researchers have now developed a more accurate "dual attention" prediction scheme that minimizes the volume of prediction data that needs to be transferred across the network.... Read more

Recently, using random forest regression models, scientists estimated an urban floor (building) area map with high accuracy for mainland China.... Read more

The U.S. economy stands to gain $160 billion a year in extra output from a successful national high-speed internet plan that would boost labor productivity and allow more people to work from home, according to new research.... Read more

Many scientific experiments require highly precise time measurements with the help of a clearly defined frequency. Now, a new approach allows the direct comparison of frequency measurements in the lab with the atomic clock in Bern, Switzerland.... Read more

Gerard Thery, the telecoms engineer whose Minitel project brought internet-style communications to France long before other industrialised countries, has died aged 88, officials said Monday.... Read more

Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, and Optus have released findings of a joint nationwide project to improve bushfire resilience of critical telecommunications.... Read more

There'll be no fans in the stands, and less media on the ground, so when it comes to covering the Tokyo Olympics, broadcasters are relying on technology to give viewers a more vivid experience.... Read more

A vehicle that remains continuously connected even when in remote areas is being road tested in Cornwall in the south west of the UK.... Read more

More than 700 imaging satellites are orbiting the earth, and every day they beam vast oceans of information—including data that reflects climate change, health and poverty—to databases on the ground. There's just one problem: While the geospatial data could help researchers and policymakers address critical challenges, only those with considerable... Read more

Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, called this week on the administration of President Joe Biden to greenlight a plan to transmit the internet to people in Cuba via high-altitude balloons when their government has blocked access.... Read more

The number of smartphones, laptops and other devices connected to the internet is continuously increasing. This expanding network of connected devices, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT), entails the transfer of large amounts of data over the internet.... Read more

If service becomes slow when you're trying to send a quick email on your smartphone, you might scroll through your network options and discover how many Wi-Fi networks there are. In fact, this plethora of options is itself the problem. These networks are in competition with one another, limiting the... Read more

It's no secret that Qualcomm aims to ride the 5G wave for growth—supplying processors not only for smartphones but also connected cars, laptops, virtual reality headsets and myriad other devices as they link up to these fifth-generation cellular networks.... Read more

The promise of 5G Internet of Things (IoT) networks requires more scalable and robust communication systems—ones that deliver drastically higher data rates and lower power consumption per device.... Read more

Valuable data is flowing rapidly from Earth observing satellites back to the planet, thanks to the most sophisticated laser communication network ever built.... Read more

Swedish luxury automobile manufacturer Volvo Cars and leading ICT provider Ericsson have taken an important step towards achieving seamless cross-border 5G connectivity in vehicles. Partners in the EU-backed 5GCroCo project, the two companies successfully tested the handover of connected cars between two national mobile 5G networks.... Read more

Protected Satellite Communications (SatComs) exhibit specific characteristics such as security, intelligence, anti-jamming, and nuclear disaster survivability. They constitute one of the key research topics in modern communications. Currently, the United States is using the latest Advanced Extremely High-Frequency (AEHF) system to provide protected communications. Other countries are also employing their... Read more

The astonishing rise of smartphones in everyday life has created many solutions (GPS maps, internet browsing and messaging, to name just a few). But they have also brought new moral dilemmas. One issue in particular stands out in the wake of the pandemic—the fine line between care and surveillance.... Read more

Have you ever chatted with a friend about buying a certain item and been targeted with an ad for that same item the next day? If so, you may have wondered whether your smartphone was "listening" to you.... Read more

In the Biden Administration's proposal to invest in the country's infrastructure, $100 billion is carved out to address gaps in broadband access. According to the Federal Communications Commission, at least 19 million Americans remain without any access to broadband, and many more either can't afford it or have speeds below... Read more

I have a cellphone built into my watch. People now take this type of technology for granted, but not so long ago it was firmly in the realm of science fiction. The transition from fantasy to reality was far from the flip of a switch. The amount of time, money,... Read more

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been much flaunted as the future of sensors and controllers allowing remote access to environmental and other information and facilitating feedback systems that would otherwise require human intervention. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote sensing and remote control of equipment has become... Read more

The encryption algorithm GEA-1 was implemented in mobile phones in the 1990s to encrypt data connections. Since then, it has been kept secret. Now, a research team from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), together with colleagues from France and Norway, has analyzed the algorithm and has come to the following conclusion: GEA-1... Read more

Imagine you're a fisherman living by a lake with a rowboat. Every day, you row out on the calm waters and life is good. But then your family grows, and you need more fish, so you go to the nearby river. Then, you realize you go farther and faster on... Read more

When your Netflix stream drops out in the middle of a rainstorm, can you blame the wild weather?... Read more

High-speed internet access has gone from an amenity to a necessity for working and learning from home, and the COVID-19 pandemic has more clearly revealed the disadvantages for American households that lack a broadband connection.... Read more

After the massive internet outage Tuesday that shut down websites and apps across the world, Virginia Tech computer scientist Ali Butt says the incident points to the weakness of the cloud infrastructure upon which many prominent websites are built.... Read more

On a spring day in 2020, residents of El Paso, Texas, saw their phones light up with a text message: "Avoid parks/family gatherings this Easter. Stay home, stay safe. Do it for your loved ones."... Read more

Fastly, the company hit by a major outage that caused many of the world's top websites to go offline briefly this week, blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.... Read more