System Bits: August 20

RF jammer technology
To thwart electronic warfare technology, a research team at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is developing a new generation of advanced radio frequency (RF) jammer technology as part of a project known as Angry Kitten by using commercial electronics, custom hardware development, novel machine-learning software and a unique test bed to evaluate unprecedented levels of adaptability in EW and investigate advanced methods that can counter increasingly sophisticated EW threats.

The researchers are developing fully adaptive and autonomous capabilities that aren’t currently available in jammers. They believe a cognitive electronic warfare approach, based on machine-learning algorithms and sophisticated hardware, will result in threat-response systems that offer significantly higher levels of electronic attack and electronic protection capabilities, and will provide enhanced security for U.S. combat aircraft.

When an EW encounter begins, the Angry Kitten system chooses an optimal jamming technique from among many available options, and as the engagement progresses, the next-generation system is designed to adapt. It will assess how effective its jamming is against the threat and quickly modify its approach if necessary.

Angry Kitten research also includes investigation of cognitive learning algorithms that allow the jammer to independently assess and respond to novel opposing technology. The team is developing techniques to enable an EW system to respond effectively should it encounter unfamiliar hostile radar techniques.

Moreover, the flexibility of the Angry Kitten system allows it to represent a range of threat EA systems, which should help to support the development of new and improved EP measures.

Teleported by electronic circuit
While ETH Zurich researchers cannot “beam” objects or humans of flesh and blood through space yet — a feat sometimes alluded to in science fiction movies – they have however managed to teleport information from A to B for the first time in an electronic circuit, similar to a computer chip.

The teleportation took place in a so-called solid state system by using a device similar to a conventional computer chip. The essential difference to a usual computer chip is that the information is not stored and processed based on the laws of classical physics, but on those of quantum physics.

In their work, the researchers were able to teleport information across a distance of about six millimetres, from one corner of a chip to the opposite one; shown to be possible without transporting the physical object carrying the information itself from the sender’s to the receiver’s corner.

Usually, in telecommunication information is transmitted by electromagnetic pulses. In mobile communications, for example, microwave pulses are used, while in fibre connections it is optical pulses, the researchers explained. In contrast, quantum teleportation does not transport the information carrier itself, but only the information. This is possible due to the quantum mechanical properties of the system, in particular the entanglement established between the sender and the receiver. For non-physicists, entanglement constitutes a magic link between the two parties which exploits the laws of quantum physics.

Next, the researchers plan to increase the distance between the sender and receiver in their device. They will try to teleport information from one chip to another. In the long term the goal will be to explore whether quantum communication can be realized over longer distances with electronic circuits, more comparable to those achieved today with optical systems.

The ant depicted on top of the superconducting circuit illustrates the relative proportions of the macroscopic electrical circuits for the first time used for teleportation. (Source: ETH Zurich)

Teleportation is an important future technology in the field of quantum information processing. For example, it may be possible to transmit information from one location to another one in a future quantum device or processor. Compared to today’s information and communication technologies, which are based on classical physics, quantum information processing has the advantage that the information density is much higher: In quantum bits more information can be stored and more efficiently processed than in classical bits.

~Ann Steffora Mutschler