Lifeboat Foundation

In May 2022, the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload onboard a small CubeSat satellite was launched into orbit 300 miles above Earth’s surface. Since then, TBIRD has delivered terabytes of data at record-breaking rates of up to 100 gigabits per second—100 times faster than the fastest internet speeds in most cities—via an optical communication link to a ground-based receiver in California.

This data rate is more than 1,000 times higher than that of the radio-frequency links traditionally used for satellite communication and the highest ever achieved by a laser link from space to ground. And these record-setting speeds were all made possible by a communications payload roughly the size of a tissue box.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory conceptualized the TBIRD mission in 2014 as a means of providing unprecedented capability to science missions at low cost. Science instruments in space today routinely generate more data than can be returned to Earth over typical space-to-ground communications links. With small, low-cost space and ground terminals, TBIRD can enable scientists from around the world to fully take advantage of laser communications to downlink all the data they could ever dream of.

A multi-institutional team has created an efficient method for measuring high-dimensional qudits encoded in quantum frequency combs, a kind of photon source, on a single optical chip using already available experimental and computational resources.

Despite the fact that the word “qudit” may appear to be a typo, this less well-known relative of the qubit, or quantum bit, has the ability to carry more data and is more noise-resistant, two crucial characteristics required to enhance the performance of quantum networks, quantum key distribution systems, and eventually the quantum internet.

In contrast to traditional computer bits, which classify data as ones or zeros, qubits can hold values of one, zero, or both. This is due to superposition, a phenomenon that enables several quantum states to exist simultaneously. Qudit’s “d” refers to the variety of levels or values that may be encoded on a photon. Traditional qubits only have two levels, but by adding more levels, they become qudits.

“Thermal issues are currently one of the biggest bottlenecks that are plaguing any kind of microelectronics,” says team lead Srabanti Chowdhury, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. “We asked ourselves, ‘Can we perform device cooling at the very material level without paying a penalty in electrical performance?’”

Indeed, they could. The engineers grew a heat-wicking diamond layer right on top of individual transistors—their hottest points—as well as on their sides. Heat flowed through the diamond to a heat sink on the back of the device. With this technique, the researchers achieved temperatures 100 degrees Celsius lower without any degradation of the device’s electrical properties. They will report their findings in San Francisco at the IEEE International Electron Device Meeting in December.

They demonstrated their technique on gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron-mobility transistors, or HEMTs. GaN is the go-to alternative to silicon for high-frequency applications, as it can sustain higher electric fields and responds more quickly to electric field changes. GaN also breaks down at a higher temperature than silicon. But not high enough: “If you go by the physics of the material, you see what its potential is, and we’re nowhere close to that today,” says Chowdhury. Keeping GaN HEMTs cool as devices shrink and frequencies grow will allow them to live up to their physics-promised potential.

Telecommunications have reshaped many aspects of our lives over the past few decades by providing incredibly convenient ways to share and access information. One of the most important enablers for this transformation has been the adoption and improvement of broadband technologies, which cram enormous amounts of data over wide frequency bands to achieve unprecedented transfer speeds. Today, most large cities have fiber optics-based networks that distribute high-speed internet directly to every home.

Unfortunately, it is not always feasible to deploy fiber optic links to remote locations and rural areas, due to the associated costs and civil engineering work required. Such places could benefit from a different approach to optical broadband communications: free-space optics. The main idea in free-space optical (FSO) communications is to set up aligned transmitter–receiver pairs where needed and use air as the medium to carry the signals.

While there are still many challenges to address in FSO systems (such as low energy efficiency, impact of weather, and high background noise), scientists worldwide are continuously trying out new ways of solving these issues and achieving higher data rates.

A team of engineers at UC Santa Cruz has developed a new method for remote automation of the growth of cerebral organoids—miniature, three-dimensional models of brain tissue grown from stem cells. Cerebral organoids allow researchers to study and engineer key functions of the human brain with a level of accuracy not possible with other models. This has implications for understanding brain development and the effects of pharmaceutical drugs for treating cancer or other diseases.

In a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from the UCSC Braingeneers group detail their automated, internet-connected microfluidics system, called “Autoculture.” The system precisely delivers feeding liquid to individual cerebral organoids in order to optimize their growth without the need for human interference with the tissue culture.

Cerebral organoids require a high level of expertise and consistency to maintain the precise conditions for cell growth over weeks or months. Using an automated system, as demonstrated in this study, can eliminate disturbance to cell culture growth caused by human interference or error, provide more robust results, and allow more scientists access to opportunities to conduct research with human brain models.

The combined force of these disruptive technologies (AI and 5G) enables fast, secure, and ubiquitous connectivity of cost-efficient smart networks and IoT (Internet-of-Things) devices. This convergence point is essential to concepts like intelligent wireless edge.

5G and AI, the connected digital edge

Artificial intelligence and 5G are the two most critical elements that would empower futuristic innovations. These cutting-edge technologies are inherently synergistic. The rapid advancements of AI significantly improve the entire 5G ecosystem, its performance, and efficiency. Besides, 5G-connected devices’ proliferation helps drive unparalleled intelligence and new improvements in AI-based learning and inference. Moreover, the transformation of the connected, intelligent edge has commenced as on-device intelligence has garnered phenomenal traction. This transformation is critical to leveraging the full potential of 5G’s future. With these prospects, these technologies hold enough potential to transform every industry. Here’s how the combination of AI and 5G has been reshaping industries.

Boa, an open-source web server suitable for embedded applications that was discontinued since 2005 is now becoming a security threat because of the complex nature of how it was built into the internet of things (IoT) device supply chain. A recent report by tech major Microsoft said that hackers are exploiting vulnerabilities in the software to target organizations in the energy sector.

Microsoft researchers revealed in an analysis that a vulnerable open-source component in the Boa web server, is used widely in a range of routers and security cameras as well as popular software development kits (SDKs), a set of tools that allow developers to write or use an existing framework to develop applications for a given platform.

Despite the software being discontinued a nearly two decades ago, Microsoft reports that attackers are continuing their attempts to exploit the flaws of the Boa web servers which include a high-severity information disclosure bug (CVE-2021–33558) and another arbitrary file access flaw (CVE-2017–9833). An unauthenticated attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to obtain user credentials and leverage them for remote code execution.

Earlier this year, we announced our vision to empower any developer to become a space developer through Azure. With over 90 million developers on GitHub, we have created a powerful ecosystem and we are focused on empowering the next generation of developers for space. Today, we are announcing a crucial step towards democratizing access to space development, with the preview release of Azure Orbital Space SDK (software development kit)—a secure hosting platform and application toolkit designed to enable developers to create, deploy, and operate applications on-orbit.

By bringing modern cloud-based applications to spacecrafts we not only increase the efficiency, value, and speed of insights from space data but also increase the value of that data through the optimization of ground communication.

Many of the fundamental technological improvements that have accelerated the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) in the past decade remain untapped by space development missions today. With the Azure Orbital Space SDK, we will help bring those improvements to space through modern agile software deployment, container-based development, use of higher-level languages, and cloud-managed networking. Extending the power of the Azure cloud into space means that spacecraft development will take less time, cost less, and bring more people into the space development ecosystem.

By Chuck Brooks

There are many other interesting trends to look out for in 2023. These trends will include the expansion of use of a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), the integration of more 5G networks to bring down latency of data delivery, more Deep Fakes being used for fraud, low code for citizen coding, more computing at the edge, and the development of initial stages of the implementation of quantum technologies and algorithms.

When all is said and done, 2023 will face a boiling concoction of new and old cyber-threats. It will be an especially challenging year for all those involved trying to protect their data and for geopolitical stability.

Continue reading “A Boiling Cauldron: Cybersecurity Trends, Threats, And Predictions For 2023” »