Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008 - (Page 20)

20 RFID but the discovery and hook into the content initially comes from the environment, meaning the keyboard is much less of an issue and the discovery is more natural. The architecture for mobile augmented reality must allow for content change, just like the Web does today. You may go to a Web site and see one thing on one day and then go back to the same site to see different content on the next. The architecture for mobile augmented reality must therefore rely on services provided by the network interpreting patterns and delivering content in real-time. The idea behind the service is to essentially setup a video conference from the end-user to a server in the network. The server in the network can do all the “heavy lifting” required by augmented reality of pattern recognition, pattern tracking, and superimposition of content. The example architecture below shows how the IP Multi-Media Subsystem (IMS) standard can be used to implement a mobile augmented reality service. In this case, the IMS standard is used to setup a video stream (reality) from an end-user to an IMS application server. The IMS application server interprets patterns and orientations of those patterns in the video and matches them against known patterns. Artiﬁcial content appropriate for the known pattern is then folded into the video stream (now the stream is “augmented reality”). The IMS application server then sends the augmented video stream back to the end user. In addition to this basic functionality, the IMS application allows for various types of interactivity between the content and the end user. Mobile augmented reality, while possible on current networks and services, will improve with better cameras on mobile devices and the launching of higher bandwidth 4G mobile services such as WiMAX or LTE. This is, in part, why the expectation is to see 2D bar codes evolving into the full mobile augmented reality user interface, but this technology is compelling enough that it is extremely likely to be the main way of access content in the future. The mobile phone has become one of the most personal devices people own. It is something they always have with them, twenty four hours a day, seven days per week. There are many choices of mobile devices available, allowing people to choose the device that meets their needs. Today, these devices have so much more computing power, more memory, and greater ﬂexibility, and the network is increasing its bandwidth and availability. The continuous improvements have brought new technology such as mobile-tomobile video calls within reach of the every day user. Augmented reality, using your mobile phone, is not too far behind. Recent Alcatel-Lucent research ﬁnds consumers believe the augmented services have broad appeal, easy to use, and a service they would use frequently. Augmented reality offers a new way to easily access Web content, replacing the need to type in URLs. Using object recognition and putting the computational heavy lifting on the network, AR opens the door to an easy to use, application that has broad appeal for everyday use. Once this technology becomes mainstream, look for “AR enabled” media and products to be commonplace. About the authors Jason Collins is the senior director of strategic solutions in Alcatel-Lucent’s Chief Technology Ofﬁce. Collins has more than 15 years of experience in the telecommunications industry in technical research and development and marketing. Today, he leads an organization that identiﬁes and builds strategic communications solutions at Alcatel-Lucent, including entertainment and augmented reality. Melissa Aiken is the director of marketing for Alcatel-Lucent’s Americas Region, Chief Marketing Ofﬁce. She has more than 15 years of experience in the telecommunications and computing industry in sales and marketing. Today, Aiken works in the Market Advantage Program (MAP), an exclusive resource for ALU Customers designed to help them better understand market opportunities, gain competitive advantage, reduce time to market and accelerate revenue from new services enabled by Alcatel-Lucent products. This article has been reprinted courtesy of RFID World — www.rﬁd-world.com. Curved UWB antenna said to be most compact Compact antennas are usually one-quarter the length of the wavelength being transmitted, but Virgina Tech engineers are claiming a 2.5-fold reduction in the size of an ultrawideband antenna. The compact UWB antenna (CUA) has a curved multi-element shape twisting around the inside of a spherical shape with a diameter just one-tenth that of the wavelength being transmitted. “We needed to know how to build an UWB antenna that came close to the size limit, and the CUA invention has accomplished this by fully utilizing the volume of a speciﬁed diameter,” said Virginia Tech engineering professor Warren Stutzman. The CUA’s shape seems to extend along the length of individual antenna elements, longer than its diameter appears, then twisting around the inside of its radome, or protective housing. According to Yang, the antenna achieves nearly optimal UWB performance for low energy, short-range transmissions of highbandwidth data such as video signals. Other 10:1 bandwidth antennas exist, such as spiral and log-periodic designs, but Yang claimed those do not work well in radar applications, while the CUA does. The key to the CUA is how it makes use of a spherical volume to pull in nearly the maximum amount of signal power that is theoretically possible. Instead of conventional AM, FM or similar encoding schemes, UWB uses pulsed transmissions that encode information by generating radio energy at speciﬁc times over large bandwidths. The technique is called pulse position or time modulation. The CUA harnesses the theory underlying UWB antennas by employing arms that wrap around a metallic central core that maintains a relatively constant distance from the arms. The design could be etched on the inside of a radome in low-cast applications, or could be constructed from curved wires or tubing. “This antenna has a 10-to-1 instantaneous bandwidth,” said Yang. “It could be used for frequency domain, multiband, multichannel applications, as well as for time-domain or pulsed applications.” Typical 10:1 bandwidth antenna designs, such as spirals, will not work in pulsed radar, according to Yang, because they do not maintain even group velocities across their entire band. The CUA, however, overcomes group velocity limitations by making better use of an entire 3-D space inside the radome rather than just a ﬂat planar area. www.mwee.com/210700033 Microwave Engineering Europe ● October 2008 ● www.mwee.com 018_020_MWEE.indd 20 6/10/08 8:27:04 http://www.rfid-world.com http://www.mwee.com/210700033 http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008 Contents Comment News Cover Feature: AWR's AXIEM Software Brings 3D Planar Electromagnetic (EM) Simulation "Up Front" RFID: Augmented Reality: Beyond RFID and QR Codes for Mobile Phone Platforms Filters & Frequency Synthesis ZigBee Goes Green with Support for Smart Energy Simplify Mobile Data Applications and Services Test Enabling the State-of-the-Art in Automatic Test Equipment National Physical Laboratory Test Facility Aids Development of Next-Generation Antennas Selecting the Synthetic Test Environment for Transmit-Receive (T-R) Modules in a Phased Array Radar System Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008

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