{"id":549027,"date":"2006-06-02T07:17:45","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T07:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549027-turning-conceptual-ideas-into-usable-technology.html"},"modified":"2006-06-02T07:17:45","modified_gmt":"2006-06-02T07:17:45","slug":"turning-conceptual-ideas-into-usable-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549027-turning-conceptual-ideas-into-usable-technology.html","title":{"rendered":"Turning conceptual ideas into usable technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

His research team, made up of himself and fellow student Neil Naude (22), as well as their supervisors, came across a new and useful discovery in their final year of undergraduate study. <\/font><\/p>\n

We live in a world of signals and transmitters, from the use of remote controls to open garages and gates to the transfer of music from a computer to a cellphone. <\/font><\/p>\n

Bozanic and his team have electronically spread similar signals in frequency, by means of a custom developed micro-chip. The result is a faster, more secure and accurate signal. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve developed a new method of coding signals that no one has ever used before on a chip,\u201d Bozanic says. \u201cWhat happens is that we have all these forms of communications such as wireless computer networks and decoders. They all use analogue or digital transmission techniques over certain frequencies. They all, however, have signals that need to be coded differently. We use complex spreading sequences for coding.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

This is important so that the signals do not interfere with each other. \u201cIf you don\u2019t synchronise the signals, you won\u2019t be able to recover them,\u201d Bozanic says\u201cOur method of spreading the signal on a specialised circuit chip allows for greater clarity and strength of the signal.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

Once the chips are manufactured and commercialised the signals can be used to set up wireless local area networks (WLANs). This means you could, for example, set up your whole office space and link devices such as printers, fax machines, cellphone and PDA\u2019s to each other and to the Internet without the use of wires. Though there are already WLANs available commercially, Bozanic\u2019s and Naude\u2019s findings will help speed up and strengthen the signals leading to better data reception, as well as provide better security for the data being transferred. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cIdeally it would be commercially viable in a hospital or home environment,\u201d Bozanic says. <\/font><\/p>\n

The discovery of a new signal system was made during Bozanic\u2019s and Naude\u2019s studies at Tuks and was part of their compulsory final-year research project. Their joint research paper, with the complex title: Analogue CMOS direct sequence spectrum transceiver with carrier recovery employing complex spreading sequences, recently reached the final round of an international micro-electronics competition in Spain hosted by the International Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. They were ranked among the top six finalists. <\/font><\/p>\n

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\u201cIn our final year we are all required to do a research assignment based on a list of 200 possible projects,\u201d Bozanic says. \u201cThis one looked interesting to me and I\u2019ve never looked back since I realised the importance of what we were doing." <\/font><\/p>\n

Previously, Bozanic won another award for this micro-electronic project. It was given to him by the only micro electronic company in SA called Sames. <\/font><\/p>\n

Bozanic started working full-time this year, so he had to put the physical design of the chip system on hold. <\/font><\/p>\n

Although it sounds all technical, Bozanic reassures us that the building blocks for such electronics are quite simple. \u201cWe get these computer software programs that help design the circuits according to certain rules and guidelines,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce designed, the manufacturers just duplicate the design using combinations of metals and silicon.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s cheap to create hardware. Creating the first design can be very expensive. Developing a chip takes at least three versions, or incarnations, and just one sample version of about 10 chips (one millimetre by one millimetre each) costs about \u00e0 30000, Bozanic says. <\/font><\/p>\n

Although the project has huge ramifications, there are technical and financial hiccups that will determine whether it will take off soon. Bozanic\u2019s project is fourth generation (4G) technology. But the market is still trying to sell 3G technology. <\/font><\/p>\n

The project is fully patented so there are no worries about the ideas being copied by someone else. \u201cThe use of complex spreading sequences is also SA patented,\u201d Bozanic says. <\/font><\/p>\n

In the meantime, Bozanic has a rough idea of the amounts in royalties that could come from the sale and use of the technology. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are talking millions of dollars \u2014 I can\u2019t wait to have the chip on my desk,\u201d he says.<\/font> <\/p>\n

INet-Bridge ||<\/em>\u00a0 <\/font>Discuss this article<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n

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Twenty-three-year-old Mladen Bozanic is sitting on a potential goldmine. He is an honours student in the department of electrical, electronic and computer engineering at the University of Pretoria. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}