In recent decades, researchers have managed to significantly reduce the size of portable wireless communication systems, such as smartphones or computers, among others. Something that has not happened in the case of antennas. Until now, since engineers from Northeastern University in Boston (USA) would have discovered how to make wireless communication antennas up to a hundred times smaller than the ones we have today . The study has been published in Nature Communications .
And what could this technological advance be translated into? It could lead us to the development of small brain implants (intended, for example, for brain-computer interfaces, which would facilitate in the future the possibility of interacting with the world around us through thought) or tiny biomedical devices to monitor our health already reduce the size of smartphones or satellites.
A challenge. The researcher who led the study, Nian Sun, a professor of electrical engineering and materials scientist at Northeastern University, explains that brain implants, in particular, are “like science fiction .” But that doesn’t seem to have stopped him from trying to make the technology they need to sustain a reality.
“Many people have made efforts to reduce the size of the antennas. That has been an open challenge for all of society, ” explains Sun, according to the news website of his university, News Northeastern. said: ‘Why don’t we think of a new mechanism? “, he adds.
The usual antennas are made with the idea of receiving and transmitting electromagnetic waves. These are very fast – they travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second – but have the disadvantage that, as these waves have a long wavelength, the antennas must be relatively large to be able to function in a specific way. effective .
For this reason, researchers have worked to adapt the antennas to acoustic resonance – the wavelength of these acoustic waves is much shorter than that of electromagnetic waves -, which makes it possible to use smaller antennas. Their goal has been to quickly convert incoming electromagnetic waves into acoustic waves. The new antenna would continue to work with telephones and other wireless communication devices.
More applications
Being able to reduce antennas to smaller sizes can have very important practical applications. Thus, for example, in our daily lives, they would facilitate the connection of tiny technological devices to the so-called Internet of things (this concept refers to the digital interconnection of everyday objects with the Internet).
As mentioned above, they could also be used in the field of biomedicine, since they could lead to better bioinjectable, bioimplantable or even ingestible devices , all of them aimed at monitoring and improving our health.
In fact, researchers are working with a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital (USA) to create brain implants that read or monitor neural activity, which would be very useful for diagnosing and treating people with epilepsy, and even for the making those brain-computer interfaces mentioned above.
