Venice: Curly Pasta shaped Radiowaves to solve congestion

A group of Italian and Swedish researchers appears to have solved the problem of radio congestion by cleverly twisting radio waves into the shape of fusilli pasta, allowing a potentially infinite number of channels to be broadcast and received.

the researchers have demonstrated this in real-life conditions by beaming two twisted radio waves across the waters of Venice.

Their results have been reported today, Friday 2 March, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics and are accompanied by a video abstract that gives an excellent insight into the authors' work.

As the world continues to adapt in the digital age, the introduction of new mobile smartphones, wireless internet and digital TVs means the number of radio frequency bands available to broadcast information gets smaller and smaller.

"You just have to try sending a text message at midnight on New Year's Eve to realise how congested the bands are," said lead author Dr Fabrizio Tamburini.

The researchers, from the University of Padova, Italy, and the Angstrom Laboratory, Sweden, devised a solution to this by manipulating waves so that they can hold more than one channel of information.

In addition to increasing the quantity of information being passed around our planet, this new discovery could also help lend an insight into objects far out in our galaxy. Black holes, for example, are constantly rotating and as waves pass them, they are forced to twist in line with the black hole.

According to Tamburini, analysing the incoming waves from the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A, could help astronomers obtain crucial information about the rotation of this "million-solar mass monster."

More information: "Encoding many channels on the same frequency through radio vorticity: first experimental test" Tamburini F et al 2012 New J. Phys. 14 033001 - http://iopscience. … 3001/article

ESA: SMOS satellite 'blinded' by radio interference

The European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday that it had launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to shut down illicit radio and TV transmissions interfering with a major climate satellite.

The 315-million-euro (434-million-dollar) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) probe "has been bugged by patches of interference from radar, TV and radio transmissions in what should be a protected band," ESA complained.

"Painstaking efforts to reduce these unwanted signals are now paying off," the Paris-based agency said.

SMOS orbits 760 kilometres (470 miles) above Earth, a low-altitude slot enabling it to gauge the impact of climate change on the movement of water across land, air and sea.

Soon after launch last November 2, scientists realised that interference was "effectively blinding" the probe as it passed over parts of southern Europe, Asia, the Middle East and some coastal zones, ESA said in a press release.

The intrusion has two causes.

One is a leakover into a band of the electromagnetic spectrum (1400-1427 MHz in the L-band) which is assigned to space astronomy and Earth exploration satellites by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

This source came from overpowerful transmitters in adjacent bands, ESA said.

The other cause is illegal transmissions by TV, radio links and networks such as security systems that are blasting into the precious radio band.

"Also, terrestrial radars appear to cause interference," ESA said.

The agency said it had had to embark upon "the tricky and lengthy process" of having the illegal transmissions shut down and the excessive out-of-band emissions reduced.

Russian Progress Module Unable to dock with ISS

An unmanned Progress supply ship during approach to the space station May 1. The spacecraft was docked using a manual system after its KURS automated navigation system malfunctioned.

(Credit: NASA)

Russian engineers believe radio interference caused an approaching unmanned Progress supply ship to abort its approach to the International Space Station Friday, officials said Saturday. Subsequent tests showed the cargo craft is in good health and that its automated rendezvous system is working normally, clearing the way for a second docking attempt around 12:10 p.m. EDT Sunday.

The aborted approach Friday occurred about 20 minutes before the Progress 38 craft was scheduled to dock at the Zvezda command module's aft port. Instead of proceeding, the craft aborted and flew safely past the station, rotating slowly to keep its solar arrays face on to the sun.

It was the second Progress docking problem in a row for the Russians. During an approach May 1, a problem with the automated KURS navigation system aboard an approaching cargo ship forced the space station commander to take over manual control using a backup system.

Russian engineers have concluded the abort Friday was triggered by interference between the KURS automated rendezvous system and a television transmitter that is part of the backup manual system, known as TORU, that was activated around the time of the abort. The result of the interference was a "cancel dynamic operations" command that prompted the Progress flight computers to abort the automated approach.

It is not yet clear why the interference issue cropped up during this approach, but Russian engineers told their NASA counterparts that the Progress spacecraft performed normally in the face of conflicting commands, executing a safe abort and standing by for additional instructions.

The KURS system features redundant components, or "strings," and subsequent tests in the absence of any interference showed both were working normally. As a result, a second attempt to dock the Progress 38 spacecraft will be made Sunday, but the TORU system will not be activated.

The Progress 38 spacecraft, loaded with 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 220 pounds of water, and 2,667 pounds of experiment equipment, spare parts, and other supplies, was launched Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

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