Future Wireless with Nano
WSIL News & Views October 19th. 2007, 11:41amI have been watching the developments in nanotechnology as a potential enabler for the new generation of wireless systems. I was initally captivated by the idea of creating a vaccum tube on a wafer using carbon nano tubes. While traditional vaccum tubes are inefficient, they have very high gains which are difficult to realize in solid state electronics. I think analog signal processing is bound to come back…
In any case, I think this paper is a significant stepping stone towards this direction. The paper is here. They even have a demo video (and a nice taste for Irish music).
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I find this topic fascinating, but I must admit I don’t really understand why this motivates analog signal processing? Won’t carbon nanotubes enable high-speed, power-conservative digital circuits? If they ever find a cheap manufacturing process for VLSI carbon nanotube circuits, watch out. I do agree, however, that Moore’s law can’t go on forever…or can it? At some point, assuming the demands on processing scale, analog circuits will be required to perform the function of traditionally digital circuits.