From ER to E.T.: How Electromagnetic Technologies Are Changing Our Lives

213 Pages·2017·4.41 MB·English

by  Rajeev Bansal

FROM ER TO E.T.
IEEE Press
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Piscataway, NJ 08854
IEEE Press Editorial Board
Tariq Samad, Editor in Chief
George W. Arnold Ziaoou Li Ray Perez
Giancarlo Fortino Vladimir Lumelsky Linda Shafer
Dmitry Goldgof Pui-In Mak Zidong Wang
Ekram Hossain Jeffrey Nanzer MengChu Zhou
FROM ER TO E.T.
How Electromagnetic Technologies
Are Changing Our Lives
RAJEEV BANSAL
The IEEE Press Series on Electromagnetic Wave Theory
Andreas C. Cangellaris, Series Editor
Copyright © 2017 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada
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ISBN: 978-1-118-45817-4
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ix
PREFACE xi
1 ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS 1
1.1 He(a)dy Stuff / 1
1.2 From Russia without English / 3
1.3 On the Shoulders of Giants / 5
1.4 Do-it-yourself Execution? / 8
1.5 Franklin: Did He or Didn’t He? / 10
1.6 De Magnete (“On the Magnet”) / 12
1.7 A Eureka Moment / 15
1.8 Auld Lang Syne / 17
1.9 As Singular as a Delta Function? / 19
1.10 Publish or Perish? / 21
DID YOU KNOW? 24
2 THE EARTH AND BEYOND 27
2.1 In the Eye of the Beholder / 27
2.2 Roses are Red, Violets are Blue… / 30
2.3 2003: An Earth Odyssey? / 32
v
vi CONTENTS
2.4 Which Came First: Big Bang or Big Crunch? / 34
2.5 Whistling in the Dark? / 36
2.6 Going Beyond a Selfe / 38
DID YOU KNOW? 41
3 SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI) 45
3.1 Little Green Men: A Phantom Menace? / 45
3.2 Waiting for Godot? / 47
3.3 Is There Anybody There? / 49
3.4 Science or Science Fiction? / 51
DID YOU KNOW? 54
4 PROFESSIONALISM: ETHICS AND LAW 59
4.1 Did Maxwell Pull a Fast One? / 59
4.2 Cell Phones and Cancer: Anatomy of a Legal Opinion / 61
4.3 Happy 200th Anniversary! / 64
4.4 Einstein Doesn’t Work Here Anymore / 66
4.5 It is a Bird. It is a Plane. It is … / 68
DID YOU KNOW? 71
5 HEALTH EFFECTS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS 75
5.1 Say Au Revoir to Cell Phones? / 75
5.2 Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity / 78
5.3 From Bell Tower to Cell Tower / 80
5.4 Nocebo: Reading This Column may Affect Your Health / 83
5.5 Magnetic Pull: Biological Effects or Medical Applications? / 85
5.6 Close Encounters With Radiation of the Other Kind / 88
DID YOU KNOW? 91
6 BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS 95
6.1 How Many Biologists Does it Take to Fix a Radio? / 95
6.2 The Grand Challenges / 97
6.3 Biomedical Applications: Taking Stock / 99
CONTENTS vii
6.4 Tugging at the Heartstrings / 101
6.5 A Jolt from the Blue? / 103
6.6 Channeling the Voice Within / 105
6.7 Battling Cancer: Microwave Hyperthermia / 107
DID YOU KNOW? 110
7 DEFENSE APPLICATIONS 113
7.1 Where is Waldo? / 113
7.2 Antimagnet / 115
7.3 Cutting to the Chase / 117
7.4 Twenty-First Century Warfare / 119
7.5 On a Wing and a Prayer / 121
7.6 ELF Communication: An Obituary / 122
7.7 Catching up with Professor Scarry / 124
7.8 Criminal Interference / 126
7.9 Wireless Networks: An Electronic Battlefeld? / 130
DID YOU KNOW? 133
8 DOMESTIC AND INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS 137
8.1 Blowin’ in the Wind / 137
8.2 Sharing the Road / 139
8.3 Rare no More? / 141
8.4 Local Heating? / 143
8.5 Coming Soon to a Wal-Mart Near You / 145
8.6 Has Your Cat Gone Phishing? / 148
8.7 The Future of Wireless Charging / 150
8.8 Electropollution or Sustainable Energy? / 151
DID YOU KNOW? 154
9 COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 157
9.1 Small is Beautiful / 157
9.2 Gigabit Wi-Fi / 159
9.3 Open Spectrum: A Tragedy of the Commons? / 161
9.4 Near-Field Communication / 163
viii CONTENTS
9.5 A New Digital Phone? / 165
9.6 Electronic Countermeasures / 167
DID YOU KNOW? 170
10 LIFELONG LEARNING 175
10.1 Back to Basics / 175
10.2 Preaching to the Choir? / 177
10.3 The Other Davos? / 180
10.4 Mirror, Mirror on the Wall; who is the Fairest of Them All? / 182
10.5 Equations Redux / 184
10.6 New Year’s Resolutions Laws / 185
10.7 Through a Glass Darkly / 187
10.8 Stranger Than Fiction? / 189
10.9 High Frequency Education: What Do You Think? / 191
AFTERWORD 195
INDEX 197
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rajeev Bansal received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University in
1981. Since then he has taught and conducted research in the area of applied electro-
magnetics at the University of Connecticut where he is currently a Professor (1992–)
and Head (2009-) of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE).
His technical contributions include three edited books [Fundamentals of Engineer-
ing Electromagnetics (2006), Engineering Electromagnetics: Applications (2006),
Handbook of Engineering Electromagnetics (2004)], two commercialized patents
(1989 and 1993), and more than 100 journal/conference papers/book chapters. Dr.
Bansal has served as an Editor/Reviewer of Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and
Applications as well as an Associate Editor of Radio Science. He has also served on
the editorial advisory boards of IETE Technical Review and the International Journal
of RF & Microwave CAE. He is a columnist for the IEEE Antennas and Propagation
Magazine (1987–) and the IEEE Microwave Magazine (since its inception in 2000).
He is a fellow of the Electromagnetics Academy, an elected member of the Connecti-
cut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE), and a senior member of the IEEE.
He has served as a consultant to the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, RI.
ix
PREFACE
Electromagnetic technologies have seeped into every corner of our lives. From that
cup of coffee one reheats in the microwave oven to the cellular wireless network
that lets one download an ebook in a jiffy, we depend on the marvels of these
technologies every day. There are times when we wonder if our privacy is going to
be made obsolete one day by RFID chips; others when we worry about the safety
of all this radiation around us. Love it or hate it, one cannot get away from these
electromagnetic technologies.
In this book, I have tried to showcase many of these wonderful electromagnetic
technologies that are changing the world we live in (e.g., new medical devices for
the ER) and the future they may create for us (e.g., making contact with E.T. some
day). The book owes its genesis to the regular columns for the IEEE Antennas and
Propagation Magazine and the IEEE Microwave Magazine that I have been writing
for many years. Based on the comments I have received, the columns have been
enjoyed by science/engineering students, practicing engineers, academic colleagues,
and many members of the general public with an interest in technology. In planning
the book, I had two goals in mind:
1. Preserve the original math-free style of the original columns to make the mate-
rial accessible to the broadest possible audience and
2. Create a handy textbook supplement for students and instructors in courses on
electromagnetics (and related felds) by arranging the material in a framework
that includes additional technical details and links to electromagnetic textbooks.
With respect to the second goal, it may be noted in passing that the current
accreditation criteria for electrical engineering programs emphasize that students, in
xi