Imagine driving down a twisty mountain road on a dark foggy night. Visibility is near-zero, yet you still can see clearly. Not through your windshield, but via an image on a screen in front of you.



Such a built-in radar system in our cars has long been in the domain of science fiction, as well as wishful thinking on the part of commuters. But such gadgets could become available in the very near future, thanks to the High Speed Integrated Circuits group at the California Institute of Technology.

The group is directed by Ali Hajimiri, an associate professor of electrical engineering. Hajimiri and his team have used revolutionary design techniques to build the world’s first radar on a chip–specifically, they have implemented a novel antenna array system on a single, silicon chip.



Hajimiri notes, however, that calling it a “radar on a chip” is a bit misleading because it’s not just radar. Having essentially redesigned a computer chip from the ground up, the technology is revolutionary enough to be used for a wide range of applications.



The chip can, for example, serve as a wireless, high-frequency communications link, providing a low-cost replacement for the optical fibers that are currently used for ultrafast communications. Hajimiri’s chip runs at 24 GHz (24 billion cycles in one second), an extremely high speed, which makes it possible to transfer data wirelessly at speeds available only to the backbone of the Internet (the main network of connections that carry most of the traffic on the Internet).



Other possible uses include… More here.