FCC’s broadband over power lines expansion hits major snag

April 28th, 2008 by

If you’re waiting for broadband over power lines (BPL) as an alternative to cable or DSL in your area, it may be time to finally give in to one of the big companies. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) — a group of amateur radio enthusiasts — has sued the FCC over its plan to speed up BPL’s expansion, citing concerns that the service’s radio emissions provide too many interference risks to the hobby / ham spectrum. While the FCC conducted a favorable study on BPL’s potential problems, their published report had so many redacted sections that the ARRL wants to know what they missed. A D.C. district court agrees with the League, and plans for further rollout have been tabled until the FCC can come up with more facts.

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Air Force developing UAVs that can recharge on power lines

December 14th, 2007 by

Filed under: Transportation

We’ve seen some interesting solutions to keeping UAVs powered for extended missions, but none so diabolical as actually landing on the enemy’s power lines and using their juice to power up. That’s the plan behind the Power Line Urban Sentry (PLUS) project currently being run by the Air Force Research Laboratory and private firm Defense Research Associates, and it’s already yielded UAVs that can land on power lines and charge in three hours. The project started with attempts to charge by simply flying near power lines, but when that method yielded only micro-watts of juice, focus shifted to actually landing on the lines. The team is planning all sorts of other capabilities for the tech, including navigation systems — “Power lines are like highways in the sky,” says one of the researchers — and auxiliary surveillance systems that power up when jacked in. On top of all that awesomeness, the team is also working with an outfit called the Center for Morphing Control to disguise the UAVs when they sit on the lines — so far, they say, they’ve made a small UAV “look like a Coke can.” Test flights are scheduled for 2008, and there’s still work to be done on the power line latching mechanism, but whatever — we want one.