Microwave chips help secure wireless data transmission

According to an article published on July 29 in the journal Nature Communications, one year after launching a “microwave brain” chip that can simultaneously process super-speed data and wireless signals, the research team came from the Duffield School of Engineering at Cornell University describes the process by which the chip encodes information into its own language. This technology works by taking advantage of the “microwave code embedding” mechanism to process information instantaneously with a power of less than 200 milliwatts, providing high security and optimizing performance for smart devices.

According to Interesting Engineering, today, the chip can convert complex raw data streams into many specialized microwave segments, similar to how AI divides text into tokens (the smallest text units) to understand the meaning. The process of condensing long strings of computer code into a few short microwave pulses that another “microwave brain” chip at the receiver can instantly read and understand, reduces the amount of satellite data that needs to be transmitted, and allows for faster and more secure wireless communication.

According to Bal Govind, a graduate student at Cornell University, because the data is always in the microwave domain during processing, some of the computational steps associated with traditional communication systems can be omitted. reduce, thereby lowering bandwidth requirements and power consumption, solving two major limitations for satellites, drones and many other devices.

According to Cornell Chronicle, researchers used the chip to recreate satellite images of a tropical storm. The ability to process itself in its own language helps the chip compress heavy data 8 times to transmit it to Earth faster without losing important details. The resulting reconstructed image retains key characteristics of the storm. The above capability is especially valuable for small satellites, which often have difficulty sending large image files to Earth due to energy limitations and strict bandwidth regulations.

Another advantage of the chip is its absolute security. Because language is shaped by the unique microphysical properties of the chip structure, the transmitted signal cannot be hacked or decoded by any other device, unless a chip with the exact same configuration is used.

The researchers have applied for a patent on the new chip technology and are moving toward commercializing the product through the university’s Ignite Innovation Acceleration program.