Quote:
Originally Posted by TGLS
Between fractal antennas and electronic miniaturization, you might get something the size of an animal's RFID chip, before you could account for a power supply. Having a battery in there throws it way out of whack. You'd be looking at something closer to the size of a cell phone battery. (Aside: most RFID things rely on being powered by whatever is reading them, so they get much smaller)
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Ah, excellent!
If the device itself can get that small and still send a radio signal that can be picked up 10+ miles away, this begins to look much more practical. Humans are clearly bigger than most migratory birds, so I'm guessing that even a somewhat bigger chip than typical tracking devices implanted in geese, or whatever, would still be possible to insert under the skin at the back of the neck.
It occurs to me that it would contribute to power saving if the device had more than one setting. As long as the subjects still appear to be compliant, not moving except as an apparent part of their assigned mission, you can probably get away with updating their locations a lot more seldom than if you want to use the device to track them down. Maybe it would be enough to get a couple of updates per hour, at somewhat irregular intervals (to make them unpredictable to the subject and thus hard to spoof).
If there was some reason for concern, the receiving station could send a message that set the device for more frequent updates, to be more certain of catching on if they tried to run. Finally, real-time tracking or as close to it as possible would be activated in the event of flight, with the aim of vectoring a security element to the subject's location before they could find a way to have someone remove their implant.
I realise that making the device capable of receiving signals as well as sending them will make it bigger. However, if it allows us to minimise the energy requirements by usually having it set to a low power drain mode, it might be worth it. It depends on how much bigger the device would become if it could also receive, at least to the minimal degree of being capable of going to more frequent locational updates on command. Or, you know, as soon as it detects that it's no longer within a certain range of the monitoring equipment.
Clearly, a cell phone battery is far too big to implant, but those last for a day of running a high resolution screen, sending and receiving data at high bandwidth, some talking, a lot of messaging, etc. Just telling the cell phone network where it is seems like a fairly minor part of all the energy-intensive tasks that drain a smartphone battery. So a device that
only does this sounds like it might need a proportionally smaller battery.
For example, my very dumb old sandwich phone will usually go two weeks between charges and that's with normal use, like making and receiving calls and the occasional text message. I expect that if I didn't make or receive a single call, the charge would suffice for the minimal automated comunication it does with cell towers for a much longer period than two weeks. If we are prepared to accept a minimum of 48 hours of endurance, maybe only 2-4 hours at the highest power setting, designed to allow a security team to physically track down the subject, it seems like we might make the power supply significantly smaller than my cell phone battery.
And that's with the same energy density as something that was fairly cheap a decade ago. Going to more sophisticated, but more expensive, solutions for the power supply, should also make it a bit smaller. Or haven't cell phone batteries improved any? I confess I don't have any idea whether that's a field that's still moving fast or if batteries have plateau-ed.
If making it possible to receive signals telling the device to go to a higher security setting would be impractical without adding too much weight and bulk, maybe another alternative would be, at the very least, preprogramming it to recognise suspicious motion and upgrade to a higher risk profile based on that. Would this add less weight and bulk than receiving capability?
Do any forumites have thoughts on the best way to keep the combined size of device and power supply down while still doing the job of monitoring flight risk and catching them if they do run?