Monday, April 13, 2009

Qualcomm to put Femtocells in Mutant Animals ;)



In the latest breakthrough from its labs, Qualcomm has perfected a new version of its system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology that can be embedded into animals, turning them into living, breathing highly mobile femtocells. By creating biological femtocells, Qualcomm is allaying one of the critical weaknesses of the wireless network: while the devices on the network are mobile, the infrastructure of the network is static. By turning the family dog, for example, into a femtocell, the issues of dead zones and coverage gaps disappear as coverage moves with you wherever you—and your dog—go.

Research into these dynamic biological networks is still in its infancy, but Qualcomm has released a demo video on the technology, which you can view below. As part of that research, Qualcomm is trying to overcome what it sees as the inherent limitations of many species of animals. Pigeons, for instance, could be used to create a pervasive flying network in any heavily trafficked downtown area, but the pigeon isn’t the most long-lived of animals and it has several predators, thus requiring an operator to constantly reintroduce new pigeons into the network to maintain capacity levels.

Qualcomm has solved that problem through genetic engineering. It has crossbred a pigeon with a wolf, creating a hardier more aggressive femtocell that can defend itself from both predators and the elements. The only problem with this approach, though, is its high susceptibility to industrial espionage. A rival operator could introduce biological femtocell predators into a market, to attack, maim and possible even eat another operator’s femtocells. While bio-engineering femtocells such as the wolf-pigeon might seem a natural defense mechanism against tactics, the rival operator could always engineer a better femtocell. Qualcomm demonstrated how a shark crossbred with a hawk could effectively nullify a femtocell networks composed of wolf pigeons.

See the Video below:




By the way, I hope you have realised that it was an April Fools joke :)

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