MIT scientists reverse engineer the ear for ultra-broadband, low power RF chip

Researchers at MIT have developed an ultra-broadband radio chip that's faster than any existing RF spectrum analyzer, while consuming 100 times less power. The RF Cochlea mimics the neural signal processing of the human cochlea, which uses fluid mechanics, piezoelectrics and neural signal processing to convert sound waves into electrical signals which travel to the brain. "The more I started to look at the ear," said Rahul Sarpeshkar, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, "the more I realized it's like a super radio with 3,500 parallel channels." The team has recently filed for a patent to incorporate the chip in a universal or software radio architecture that will process a broad spectrum of signals including cellular phone, wireless Internet, FM, and other signals. Ultimately, this tech could be used to build a universal radio that could receive a broad range of frequencies. Meet Professor Sarpeshkar in the video after the break.

[Via Daily Tech]

[Miles @ Jun 18th 2009 4:13PM]

Now THIS is revolutionary!

[superhobo @ Jun 18th 2009 5:25PM]

When Apple uses it in something, you'll be crediting Apple.

[mirakutea @ Jun 18th 2009 5:32PM]

My first reaction is WTF?

[mgsrocks1 @ Jun 18th 2009 7:13PM]

This is the first time that you actually made a comment without looking like a douchebag. Good job . Now, try to keep it that way from now on.

[Matt @ Jun 18th 2009 4:14PM]

Is this better than an actual ear now?

[FNG @ Jun 18th 2009 4:17PM]

what?

[pal @ Jun 18th 2009 4:47PM]

@FNG
IS THIS BETTER THAN AN ACTUAL EAR NOW?
there poor fella.. COULD YOU HEAR IT NOW??

pal ;)

[FNG @ Jun 18th 2009 5:15PM]

ahhh much better. thanks pal!

[Anonymous @ Jun 18th 2009 5:40PM]

You couldn't hear pal that well because his specification doesn't belong in America.

[DWells55 @ Jun 18th 2009 7:56PM]

Those hippies with their 50Hz and 5% faster running movies.

[LMM @ Jun 18th 2009 4:18PM]

Uhh, friggin sweet! I can't even begin to comprehend how amazing a cell phone with decent processing power and an RF chip of THAT caliber would be able to do... I mean, if they do manage to completely mimic the ear and allow for 3,500 different signals simultaneously (and I assume it's simultaneous since the human ear doesn't hear one frequency at a time) in a single chip, not only would it cover TV, cell, radio, wi-fi, etc. but it would (in theory) still be able to cover 3,496 other things we haven't even thought of!

This is truly amazing. A HUGE breakthrough.

[cbgoding @ Jun 18th 2009 4:33PM]

Each of those different technologies you described use wayyyyy more tha none channel apiece. Example: with radio, your receiver discerns different stations by the frequency of the waves being transmitted. Thus, your receiver is capable of hearing many different channels. The difference here is that this device can handle a much, MUCH wider band of frequencies.

[redcard @ Jun 18th 2009 5:30PM]

LMM, calm down a bit. Technology advances. Who'd have thought that, eh??

[LMM @ Jun 18th 2009 8:16PM]

Haha, maybe I did get a little carried away. Sleep deprivation's an emotional roller coaster :p

Just a little psyched at the idea of such a large amount info theoretically being passed to just a single device. Kinda blows my mind, ya know? I assume by the time this idea is actually implemented wide-spread all TV and radio will be a single digital band, i.e. satellite-style. That'd free up a bit of the bands being used.

Even still...3,500 channels would be a nice TV service on a handheld device ;)

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jun 18th 2009 4:19PM]

Maybe we should start looking at the brain when developing processors?

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 18th 2009 5:55PM]

Academics have been working on artificial neural networks (ANN) in software and hardware for 25 years in robotics, machine learning, computer vision, etc.

[Aaron @ Jun 18th 2009 4:21PM]

I thought God patented this when he created us 6,000 years ago.

You sir, Rahul Sarpeshkar, are getting coal for Diwali this year, you bad boy you.

[kjb434 @ Jun 18th 2009 4:33PM]

Didn't Apple already have this patented? LOL

[loocas @ Jun 18th 2009 4:46PM]

6000 years ago? Are you nuts? Chinese at that time happily celebrated with fireworks and enjoyed their noodles from some nicely crafted porcelain dishes...

What do they teach you at school?

[Aaron @ Jun 18th 2009 4:51PM]

@loocas

Are you saying you don't read the Bible literally?

BLASPHEMER!!! HERETIC!!!

Nobody was doing anything more than 6,000 years ago. They didn't exist. End of discussion.

[Piro @ Jun 18th 2009 6:13PM]

Carbon dating... hello anyone? Besides, let's please not start a religious war, everyone has their own opinion about the age of the earth.

[squeehunter @ Jun 18th 2009 6:14PM]

6000 years old! That joke keeps getting better and better every time I hear it. Like whenever someone mentions God and there is the ability to comment on it. That kind of thing. Because it never ever gets old.

[ED @ Jun 18th 2009 7:18PM]

Carbon dating! That joke keeps getting better and better every time I hear it. There's detectable radiocarbon in diamonds which are supposed to be over a billion years old, meaning they can't even be a single million years old. (article: http://creation.com/diamonds-a-creationists-best-friend )

And as for methods used for longer dates, Potassium-Argon is a primary one (I believe it's used to calibrate the others) and it has been shown not to work on rocks of known age. Therefore it can't be trusted for rocks of unknown age. (technical article: http://creation.com/excess-argon-within-mineral-concentrates-from-the-new-dacite-lava-dome-at-mount-st-helens-volcano and less technical if you don't want so much to read: http://creation.com/radio-dating-in-rubble )

Next time you see a date calculated via radioactive decay, keep in mind that we can't measure age directly, only the number of atoms of different isotopes. Ages are then calculated with the assumptions that the starting conditions were known, nothing has leaked in or out of the sample during its existence, and the decay has been constant. We know that these assumptions are false for rocks of known age, but the old ages of other unknown rocks are never doubted. Also, we are extrapolating back thousands and millions of years, while radioactivity was only discovered in 1896.

[Edward Newgate @ Jun 18th 2009 7:47PM]

Thank you kindly ED, I was contemplating doing something similar.

[Newone @ Jun 18th 2009 8:51PM]

Argh, what stone did we turn to get one of tthese here.

That crearionists idiosy of million year old diamonds with younger carbondate is a misleading lie to put it nicely. Just read

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/carbon-kb.pdf

In short, its sample containation and measurement apparatus error.

That one might have been a bit difficult, but here's a simple hard nut to break, dendrochronology. "Fully anchored chronologies which extend back more than 10,000 years exist for river oak trees from South Germany (from the Main and Rhine rivers)" This means there's a full no break record of growth rings that goes over 10 000 years back in time from now. So trees have grown for over 4000 years before earth was created???? Ill give them points for a good try for claiming that trees grow more than one ring a year in certain conditions, but these are very rare conditions. For it being off for 60% would mean that there would have been harch conditions more than every other year, even more than the growthrecord can be verified with old building with known years and there arent extra rings between now and about 1000 years ago.

Oh, and dentrochronological dates and carbon dates match, go figure that, extra rings change carbon decay rate too. :)

[Brdystyls @ Jun 18th 2009 4:22PM]

Well there goes our privacy.

[elBravo @ Jun 18th 2009 4:50PM]

Encryption!!!

[Ocal5 @ Jun 18th 2009 4:31PM]

The way of listening is new, the SDR is not. Thanks to this technique you can "decode" Digital radio thanks a small & simple receptor and a sound card to digitalize the reception before computer processing.
Great that now it can be done with less power :)

[Tony @ Jun 18th 2009 4:26PM]

So when do we get to hear music in our heads without wearing earphones?

[Amun @ Jun 18th 2009 4:37PM]

We can pretty much do this already with ultrasonic speakers (and tons of math).

"The Audio Spotlight, invented by Holosonics founder Dr. F. Joseph Pompei while a graduate student at MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology , uses ultrasonic energy to create extremely narrow beams of sound that behave like beams of light. By "shining" the sound to one location, specific listeners can be targeted with sound - without others nearby hearing it."

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Holosonics%27+Audio+Spotlight+Technology+Installed+at+the+Smithsonian-a0109827044

[Tony @ Jun 18th 2009 5:03PM]

Sweet.

[atomicmatt @ Jun 18th 2009 4:28PM]

yea no more ugly bluetooth mics and ugly earbuds, I guess apple will have to do away with the whole white ear phones and just have idiots dancing around.

[Bryan @ Jun 18th 2009 4:31PM]

Damn, my ears only have 3,400 parallel channels.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 18th 2009 4:41PM]

There are already radios that can receive a broad range of frequencies. I have a 50Khz-1.1GHz scanner in my office and it's 15 years old.

[superhobo @ Jun 18th 2009 4:54PM]

Stick it in a phone, then.

[FNG @ Jun 18th 2009 5:17PM]

hey everyone, looks its why not the LS2LS7? the smartest person ever. just ask him/her

[michas_pi @ Jun 18th 2009 7:38PM]

This ear radio is newer so it has to be better.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 18th 2009 8:10PM]

Why would I stick it in a phone? Phones already receive all the frequencies they need to.

You can have your own radio that receives a broad range of frequencies. Like I said, they are nothing extraordinary.

http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/widerxvr/0050.html

[superhobo @ Jun 19th 2009 6:54AM]

I think...you'll see a difference in size perhaps.

Just saying.

[Qwab1967 @ Jun 18th 2009 4:43PM]

Now if they could build one modeled on the cloaca I will be very impressed!

[pal @ Jun 18th 2009 4:46PM]

@FNG
IS THIS BETTER THAN AN ACTUAL EAR NOW?
there poor fella.. COULD YOU HEAR IT NOW??

pal ;)

EDIT: if this is a double post.. blame it on Engadget Comment System... It's ironic how some people are pushing the barriers of science while some people are so darn lazy to fix this stupid comment system.

[superhobo @ Jun 18th 2009 4:55PM]

Hopefully it wont need that huge antenna.

[yomama84 @ Jun 18th 2009 5:08PM]

The human body is really amazing. I bet if we study each body part more.....we'd be able to reverse engineer some amazing stuff.

God is the ultimate engineer

[FNG @ Jun 18th 2009 5:30PM]

god huh? please tell me you're not one of those "believers"

[SubGenius @ Jun 18th 2009 5:35PM]

...like a Terminator!

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jun 18th 2009 5:35PM]

If we were engineered, then we were engineered pretty poorly. Great idea god, leaving the testes on the outside!

[hohmes @ Jun 18th 2009 5:54PM]

@B3astofthe3ast

I'm glad mine are on the outside. That _design_ allowed me to successfully make babies.

Let me spell it out for you:
Sperm dies when it is too warm (internal body temperature).

I think God did a pretty darn good job.

[pieboy @ Jun 18th 2009 5:57PM]

actually, the testes need to be on the outside to maintain the right temperature. If they were inside the temperature would be too high and sperm would not be produced properly.

[CharlieX @ Jun 18th 2009 6:02PM]

i'd study the part that makes farts. those really ripe ones that could flatten a whole room of people. we will weaponize this. we will be masters of the planet!

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jun 18th 2009 6:05PM]

While all this is true, somehow this same "God" managed to engineer other mammals that *DO* have internal testes. Explain why he, with all his brilliant powers, couldn't apply the same technique to humans?