HUNTSVILLE COMPANY'S NEW USE OF RADIO FREQUENCIES GAINING ATTENTION
WITH INVESTORS WHO WANT THE TECHNOLOGY FOR COMMERCIAL USES
March 11, 2001
Section: Business
Page: 1-D
KENT FAULK News staff writer
HUNTSVILLE The way Kevin Davis sees it, moms and military leaders have one common problem - keeping track of the youngsters.
"Military leaders want to know where their soldiers are every moment in a combat situation . . . and moms and dads want to know where their kids are," said Davis, vice president of the government/defense sector at Time Domain Corp.
Time Domain thinks it has an answer - and the military is listening. Being able to track a person to within 1 inch of where they are standing and improvements to radar and communications are among the uses the Huntsville company sees for its time-modulated ultra wideband wireless technology. The technology has generated a stir because it uses existing radio in a whole new way. A traditional AM or FM radio signal is broadcast in one long, continuous wave on one specific frequency. Time-modulated ultra wideband wireless technology, however, sends voice or video messages in tiny pulses. Time Domain compares it to a superhigh-speed Morse Code with 40 million dots and dashes per second. And the ultra wideband signals are sent across many radio frequencies at once, tantamount to quickly pushing all the keys on an organ at one time. Because the ultra wideband signals are sent at a very low power - about one-tenthousandth of the amount needed under traditional radio broadcast techniques - they don't interfere with regular radio broadcasts. Only a special receiver tuned to look for it could get the message out of this white noise zone. The invention potentially opens up an almost limitless number of new channels for communications. No interference Because the pulse signals can go through buildings or objects, wireless telephones made with the technology would not have interference problems inside buildings. And it opens up improvements for high resolution radar - bouncing radio signals off objects. It also allows for more precise tracking of people and objects that carry sensors. "We're not breaking the laws of physics, but it's very different and it leads to very different possibilities," Davis said. These possibilities are what has attracted the attention of a number of investors, companies and individuals wanting to use the technology for a whole slew of commercial products. Outside investors have funneled more than $70 million into the company. Time Domain, which has grown from about 70 employees to more than 200 employees in the past year, is working with partners to integrate what it calls its PulsON chipsets into new or existing products. A few of the products being developed or considered include: High resolution radars that can help police see bad guys through walls. Time Domain is developing this RadarVision 2000 for sale later this year to law enforcement agencies. Wireless ethernet systems able to transmit large amounts of data, making it possible, for example, to support computer games played by players at different sites. Personal radar systems that will let you know if anything is lurking in or near your home. But Time Domain's technology has especially gotten the attention of the military. It has 13 contracts - most of which began last year - with the military to look at different ways of using the technology, including communications and the through-the-wall radar detection. Military uses Of the military contracts, three are with the Army Simulation Training and Instrumentation Command in Florida to introduce time-modulated ultra wideband technology to make military training more realistic. One contract calls for incorporating it into a system for use during war games. It would detect when a soldier using the Army's new Objective Infantry Combat Weapon hits a target hidden by a wall or other object. This new rifle is a replacement for the M-16 but also includes a launcher that shoots grenades timed to explode close to a target. Today, soldiers use lasers attached to their rifles during war games to play laser tag with other soldiers. Each of the soldiers wears a sensor that activates if the laser hits it. But there are a couple of problems. One is that lasers only work when one soldier is in the line of sight of another soldier. Another is that by the time a beam of laser light fired from a long distance reaches its target, the circle of laser light may illuminate a large area. "What is a miss in combat is a kill in training because the systems are not accurate enough," Davis said. With the time-modulated ultra wideband technology, sensors are placed on the soldiers and transmitter antennae are put on the weapons as well as around the battlefield or inside buildings. Based on the distances of the sensors to the different antennae, a precise location of every soldier at any given time can be measured. And the paths their bullets or grenades took also can be precisely traced, allowing a kill or miss to be accurately registered. "It also helps you avoid firing on your friends," said Larry Fullerton, Time Domain's chief engineer and inventor of the technology. Besides that, the technology also can be used to record what's happening with other activities during the war games such as walkie talkie transmissions, medical systems operations, as well as other weapons, such as missiles. When the whole thing is put together, it gives the commanders later reviewing the war games a layout of exactly when and where every movement was made on the battlefield. It's this same type of precision tracking that could be developed into products to help parents keep track of their children. "A lot of the problems we run into are just problems that are timeless," Davis said. On the Net Time Domain Inc.: www. timedomain.com WHAT IS ULTRA WIDEBAND TECHNOLOGY? It's a revolutionary wireless technology for transmitting digital data. Ultra wideband can not only carry huge amounts of data over a short distance at very low power, but also has the ability to carry signals through doors and other obstacles. At higher power levels, UWB signals can travel to significantly greater ranges. Instead of traditional sine waves (see illustration at left), ultra wideband radio broadcasts digital pulses (illustration at right) that are timed very precisely on a signal across a very wide spectrum at the same time. Transmitters and receivers must be able to send and receive pulses with an accuracy of trillionths of a second.
SPECIALTime Domain's ultra wideband technology will be used for high-resolution radars that will help police see bad guys through walls, among other applications., NEWS STAFF/HAL YEAGER Time Domain founder Larry Fullerton is bullish on the company's revolutionary technology - and so is the military.
All content © 2001- THE Birmingham News (AL)