E.T. Phone Home

One of my guilty pleasures is watching UFO conspiracy shows on TV. One night an episode of "UFO Files" really captured my interest. It was a segment describing how after the 1947 Roswell crash the military called in scientists from Bell Labs to examine the wreckage so they could reverse engineer alien technologies. According to the story this is where us lowly humans came up with lasers, Kevlar, the transistor, night vision goggles and more importantly optical fiber telecommunications. I have linked in the segment to this blog if you are really interested in viewing it. I will discuss my thoughts on this but first a quick lesson on optical telecommunications. UFO Files segment


By 1947 fiber optics was not a new idea. Alexander Graham Bell was actually the first to transmit voice over light in 1880. His invention was called the "photophone" however it was not as cost effective as his previous invention, the "telephone". But it proved sound could travel on light.

Work on optic fibers continued over time, mostly for medical imaging purposes. The inherent electromagnetic problems that come with transporting voice over copper wires pointed our way towards continued fiber optics development. By 1970 three physicists working for Corning Labs came up with usable fiber for transmitting voice and data. Hello Conspiracy Theorists. Invented by Corning Labs, not Bell Labs.

The first commercial fiber network was in place by 1975. By 1986 Sprint installed the first national "all fiber optic" network. If you are old enough you may remember the "you can hear a pin drop" commercials. Initially fiber optics worked with a pulse of light representing a digital "1" and no beam represented "0". We were soon able to break up the light spectrum and send 1's and 0's on the spectrum which increased the bandwidth capabilities exponentially. This multiplexing protocol is called WDM or "wave-length division multiplexing".

The current record on optical fiber is the multiplexing of 155 channels with each channel carrying a bandwidth of 100Gbps over a 7000km optical fiber. This is an amazing amount of bandwidth and the possibilities of a bandwidth limit for fiber optics can currently not be estimated. It will keep growing for centuries to come.

Now to the fun stuff. We as the Human Beings of this Earth are simply not capable of coming up with new technologies on our own, some would have you believe. This takes us back to 1993 when the X-Files came out and became a popular TV show. UFO conspiracies meant big money and people want to believe. So in 1996 a former intelligence agent for the military named Philip J. Corso released the book The Day After Roswell. In a nutshell he claims that an extraterrestrial craft crashed in Roswell in July 1947. The military secretly whisked away the craft for storage in Area 51. The U.S. Government assembled a team of scientists from various military contractors to examine the wreckage. Inside they found glass strands instead of wires. When they sent light beams thru one end of the fibers they would project on the other end. The scientists from Bell Labs then took this concept back to Murray Hills and fiber optic technologies were born. Philip Corso passed away in 1998 taking his secrets with him.

Now my personal opinion on this. Seems amazing to me that I cannot even drop a drinking glass without it shattering, yet glass strands the size of hair were able to survive a horrific crash. I once heard Dr. Carl Sagan address the alien issue in very logical and believable terms. Essentially he stated that in a Universe as vast as ours the possibility of intelligent life is out there. However should this life exist and is looking for other life why would they search out our tiny planet, revolving around our tiny Sun, in our tiny solar system, in our tiny galaxy? In other words if you are hunting for elephants you wouldn't go to an iceberg, that is the last place you would expect to find one.

Something did crash in Roswell in 1947. It was an experimental metallic spy balloon we were developing to spy on Russia during the cold war. This is pretty well documented. A post World War II leap in technology is not unfathomable. Many of the greatest minds of the time emigrated to the United States because of Nazi persecution. Does the name Albert Einstein ring a bell here? If you put together great scientific minds than great technologies are bound to come out of this collaboration. By 1947 the transistor, lasers and fiber optics were already being developed. Mankind is capable of wonderful things and remarkable ideas on our own. We built Stonehenge without aliens, we built the Pyramids without aliens, we developed the Aztec calendar without aliens and we certainly created fiber optic telecommunications without the help of aliens.

African-American History Month Spotlight: Granville T. Woods

Everyone loves an underdog story and I am no exception. The story of how Granville T. Woods rose from leaving school at the age of 10 to become one of the early pioneers of telecommunications and one of the greatest inventors of all time is nothing short of inspirational.

Granville T. Woods was born in Columbus, OH in 1856. Though Ohio was a free state he was still subject to "black laws" which were special laws set aside for African-Americans which perpetuated segregation. Granville was allowed to attend public schools, but only until the age of 10. Then he had to go out and work.


He had a very curious mind and was naturally inclined toward how machinery and electricity worked. The railroad was a natural fit. He also worked as a machinist, blacksmith, fireman, steelworker and boat engineer, but the railroad was his love. Realizing the value of education he would teach himself and take private lessons after work. Because African-Americans were not allowed to check out books from libraries he would have his friends get books for him. Eventually he earned a degree in mechanical and electric engineering by attending night classes after work. However being an African-American in a college at that time there are no records on which school he attended.


With his brother he then started the Woods Railway Telegraph Company. Granville's first patent was awarded for an improved telephone transmitter (the mouthpiece you speak into). However due to patent laws at the time the patent was assigned to Alexander Graham Bell. A few months later Granville's second patent was awarded for the "telegraphony". The telegraphony allowed voice transmissions to travel over a telegraph line. An important telecommunications invention indeed as it was first to allow voice and data transmissions over the same wire. This gave people the ability to send personal telegraph transmissions without having to know Morse code. The telegraphony was so successful that Alexander Graham Bell purchased the patent and with the money Granville T. Woods was financially able to spend full time inventing.


Turning his mind back to the railroad he came up with his next important invention, the "Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph". A large problem at the time was that trains had no way of communicating with each other or the dispatch office. This created an obviously dangerous situation. Granville's invention took care of this problem by allowing trains to communicate with each other using the copper wire which was laid along rail road tracks. Dispatch offices then knew the location of trains and what tracks they were on. In the process this invention went on to save potentially hundreds, if not thousands of human lives.

In his lifetime Granville Woods went on to claim 60 patents which earned him the nickname of "The Black Edison". His invention of the electric third rail is still in use today with many railroads and subways around the world. Another of his great inventions was the Electric Trolley which allowed trolley cars to be powered by overhead electric lines instead of being pulled by horses. We still see these in use in downtown San Francisco and Philadelphia. Most of his inventions revolved around railway safety however he also invented the egg incubator. Granville T. Woods passed away in 1910 a very successful man.


After researching this man's life I am beginning to wonder whether we should start referring to Edison as "The White Granville Woods".

The Nanosecond Culture

In 2011 our global society is moving at an ever increasing rate. Our marketing pundits were quick to coin a term to describe us as the "Nanosecond Culture". In telecommunications we have been measuring things in the nanosecond for years.


How fast is a nanosecond? A nanosecond is one billionth of a second. In mathematical terms it can be represented as 10(-9) seconds or 1/1,000,000,000 of a second. In other words it is very very very fast.


Let's try and put some perspective on this without going overboard on physics. We will start with the speed of light since fiber optic communications moves at the speed of light. The speed of light travels at 186,000 miles per second. This is how fast your voice is traveling when you make a phone call on a fiber optic network. The moon is approximately 250,000 miles from earth, so at this speed you can reach the moon in 1.3 seconds.

We are bound by the speed of light. According to Einstein if an astronaut left Earth traveling faster than the speed of light, than he would arrive before he departed. Einstein also said it would take an infinite amount of energy to accomplish this. In our current understanding this is impossible.


Back to the nanosecond. Imagine a one foot length of phone wire. This is how fast light moves in one nanosecond. If the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second then equate the nanosecond to one second of your life to 31.7 years.


In telecommunications we equate fiber optic based communications to one foot equal to one nanosecond. In radio based communications such as satellite, mobile phone and microwaves we equate the nanosecond with one gigahertz (1 GHz). Consequently the speed of transmission with your Smartphone on a 2 GHz network is 2 nanoseconds.


The next time you are on a call with someone on the other side of the world and it sounds like they are next door, try to keep the nanosecond in mind.

Hedy Lamarr and Frequency Hopping

There are many great stories in telecommunications but Hedy Lamarr's is my favorite. She is truly a hero in modern day telecom.


Many of the wireless technologies used today for security and bandwidth efficiency can be traced back to an invention Hedy Lamarr patented during World War II. If you are using Bluetooth, a WiFi hotspot, a cordless phone, a mobile phone on the Verizon network, a wireless mouse, keyboard, printer or fax, than you are using this technology.

Despite leaving school at 16 she was a brilliant mathematician and innovator, but her beauty and talent lead her to a career as a film actress. She was from Austria and married young to an overbearing arms manufacturer. Upset by her scandalous films he would keep his young bride close to him at technological meetings and parties he hosted which included guests such as Hitler and Mussolini. It was here that she picked up many of her technical skills but the Jewish actress had a lot of distaste for her husband and his friends.


As legend has it, one night she drugged her husband, disguised herself as a maid and escaped to Paris for a divorce. Eventually she made her way to London and was discovered by Louis B. Mayer and the rest is film history. But we are here to discuss telecommunications history.


During World War II, Hedy wanted to funnel her hatred of Hitler to more than selling war bonds. From her husband's meetings she knew that radio guided torpedoes and missiles were easily jammed by the enemy. Working with composer George Antheil they developed a method of changing frequencies so sender and receiver both knew what frequency the message is broadcast at.


It works like this. Imagine you are in a car listening to a radio broadcast that is meant just for you. The DJ is going to broadcast portions of the program on one frequency, then on another, then on another. Only you and the DJ know the frequency sequence. As you listen you change the frequency on the dial of your radio in the order the DJ told you and you get all the messages sent. Anyone else listening will hear a portion of the message but will have no idea where to change their dial to receive the remaining messages. It would make no sense to them. This is termed "frequency hopping" in telecommunications.


In 1942 Hedy and George Antheil were granted patent number 2,292,387 for their "Secret Communication System". Sadly the idea was so far ahead of it's time that the patent ran out before Hedy or George Antheil's revolutionary idea was put to use. In the late 1950's government contractors researching old patents stumbled upon the Secret Communication System. With the technology of the time they used this information for torpedo guidance systems and other "spread spectrum" communications. Later frequency hopping was no longer a government secret and was utilized for wireless telecommunication systems in several different forms. With the patent expired Hedy and Antheil never made a dime on their invention. In 1997 Hedy was finally recognized for her contribution and won the EFF Pioneer award for her innovative technique. She passed away three years later.

The Nyquist Theorem and Analog to Digital Conversion

Telecommunications is magic measured in nanoseconds. The most magical part to me is how something analog like the human voice is made digital for transport and then made analog again to the listener. All thanks to a theory first published in 1924 by a Bell Labs scientist named Harry Nyquist.


We start with frequency. Sound is represented as waves. The amount of time these waves repeat is called frequency. We measure the frequency of these waves in seconds of time and it is represented as a Hertz (Hz). 1 Hz means the wave repeated once every second.


The human voice ranges between 300 Hz and 3400 Hz. For telecommunication sampling purposes we use a frequency of 4000 Hz to make sure we capture the full spectrum with some room to spare.


Enter Harry Nyquist. In a very down and dirty description, the Nyquist Theorem states that when you sample noise you must double the amount of its frequency in order to get a close to perfect representation of it. In voice telecommunications this means a 4000 Hz voice range must be sampled 8000 times per second.


Using this information your phone system uses an algorithm called a codec (coder/decoder). The codec uses this algorithm to convert the samples from analog to digital format for transport, then digital to analog format when received. This is accomplished through a method called pulse code modulation (PCM). I am not going to explain PCM in this blog but it is an important concept to keep in the back of your mind.


Now is the real fun part. Binary data is either a "0" or "1" and is called a bit (binary digit). In digital transmission we create "letters" out of a series of 8 bits, known as an "octet" or a "byte". If we have 8 bits of information representing a sample and 8000 samples (8 bits X 8000 samples), than we need 64,000 bits per second for bandwidth to truly represent the human voice. 64 kbps ... 64 kbps ... 64 kbps ... Sound familiar?

64kbps is the voice channel in T1, the DS0, the b-channel in ISDN. It goes by many names and is found in VoIP, wireless, fiber optics, microwave and all manners of telecommunications.


Of course the more we sample something the better we represent it. However we are limited in our telecom world by bandwidth. 64 kbps for voice seems to suit us very nicely. We can easily reduce it to 56 kbps but the quality is simply not as good. I have experimented with VoIP using 32 kbps, 24 kbps and 16 kbps. The voice quality is simply horrible once the sampling rates are reduced.


My conclusion is that 64 kbps for voice is here to stay for a long time. Thank you Mr. Nyquist, your theory still stands tall 87 years later.

Newton's Telecom Dictionary - a must have

On the internet you can find hundreds of testimonials touting the benefits of the Newton's Telecom Dictionary. I am no exception to its praises and thought I might as well throw my hat in the ring.


Robert Newton first published his dictionary in 1984. Each year he comes out with a new edition with the exception of 2010. This just makes me even more anxious for 2011 knowing that the 26th edition will soon be on the shelves. Count me in.


Robert Newton is a hero to me. His dictionary is a brilliant balance between explaining complex subjects in easy to understand terms and tackling highly complex concepts in terms for those who understand the upper echelon of our industry's terminology. However he is not beyond throwing in a humorous quip or two to keep things light hearted. The format is in dictionary form and it is easy to quickly find the subject you are looking for.


I was first introduced to Newton's Telecom Dictionary in 1996. It was in its 12th edition and was around 900 pages. I upgraded in 2006 to the 22nd edition which was around 1200 pages. The 25th edition is around 1300 pages and contains 25,000 definitions. It is updated daily by a team of editors. This is testament to the incredible growth of the Telecommunications Industry over the past few years.


His dictionary has been by my side through thick and thin. Always there for me like an old friend ready to guide me when someone throws out a new term, cryptic acronym or long forgotten technology. I highly recommend this book for anyone, no matter what their experience or position, involved in the Telecom Industry. It has always come in handy for me.