10 Random Thoughts On 12-24-08

Here's my thoughts for this week:

1. Will 2009 be the last year of the mechanical hard drive ?
2. Every year is some sort of a milestone but 2009 will be special - my 30 year college (UMass Amherst ) graduation anniversary and my oldest graduating from high school - time flies doesn't it?
3. How long will it be before we are calling ADSL legacy technology?
4. Still no word from Obama on who his FCC chairman will be.
5. Let's see - a Patriots win combined with either a Miami or Baltimore loss means playoffs for New England.
6. Will 2009 be the year of Android?
7. Have you tried Chrome yet? You should.
8. Can we crawl out of this economic meltdown? We always have and I believe we always will.
9. My heart and prayers go out to a colleague and family who lost their 12 year old this past fall.
10. Happy Holidays - wishing lots of enjoyment with family and friends.
11. Number 11 because it is Christmas Eve - if you do nothing else today.... read Tom Friedman's December 23 NYT Column Time to Reboot America
    

Have fun. Take time. Be safe.

Jamming Cell Phones

Jamming cell phone signals is illegal in the United States but not illegal in other countries. As a result, people in the United States are finding and buying these devices on the Internet. The New York Times ran an interesting piece on November 2 titled Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally. The piece starts with the following:

One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.

“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius. “She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said.

I've written about wireless signal jamming in the past - specifically when I wrote about the New England Patriots video taping scandal that included rumors of wireless communications signal jamming. I have to admit, while watching the Colts/Patriots game yesterday and seeing Tom Brady struggle hearing plays using his helmet headset, jamming was on my mind. It got to the point plays were being relayed in the old fashioned way - was it crowd noise or could it have been signal jamming?

Let's take a basic look at the technology. Communications technicians and engineers are constantly aware of something called the signal-to-noise ratio, commonly abbreviated as SNR. The noise we are typically dealing with in unjammed situations is commonly referred to as Johnson or White Noise and it's always there. If systems are designed properly and when in range, communications signals are stronger than the noise and the noise is less significant because the SNR is high (think divide signal strength by noise strength). Basically, if a wanted communications signal is stronger than the noise then communications happens. If the noise is stronger than the communications signal then communications does not happen. We've all experience this in our cars while driving and listening to a radio station. As we get closer to a station signal source (antenna), the signal gets stronger and we hear the station clearer.

Now back to jammers - in simplest terms, jammers work by sending out strong signals that overpower the wanted communications signals between a cell phone and cellular antenna towers. Basically they generate the equivalent of noise at specific cell frequencies. Phones end up not communicating with the towers and users see a "No Service" type message on their phones.

A quick search of the Internet brings up a number of off-shore companies selling signal jammers. One of the more popular companies is London based PhoneJammer.com. PhoneJammer.com sells lots of different jamming devices ranging from a $149 portable jammer that runs on 9V batteries and has a range of 5m to a $3995 ultra high power phone jammer which is described as the most sophisticated digital cell phone jammer of its class, with tough die-cast aluminum casing and dual inter cooler, ideal for large hall type rooms or outdoor locations. It comes with a high gain base station type antenna.

The New York Times quotes PhoneJammer.com's site operator as follows:

"Victor McCormack, the site’s operator, says he ships roughly 400 jammers a month into the United States, up from 300 a year ago. Orders for holiday gifts, he said, have exceeded 2,000."

I'll write more about different kinds of wireless signal jamming this week. Remember - the devices are illegal in the United States.

New England Patriots Jamming Wireless Frequencies?

Born and raised here I'm pretty much a die-hard New England sports team fan - Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins and Patriots. I've read the reports and listed to the commentary on national TV and a lot of the local radio stations. I found it a little hard to believe the Patriots would break a rule the way they did but it sounds like they did. If you haven't heard the news - here's how I understand it.

Apparently the Patriots had a camera guy taping the defensive coaches as they sent signals out to the team on the field. After each signal recording the guy would pan the camera up to the scoreboard to show the down and yardage. From what I've read the team could then take this after the game and synch up the signals with the down and yardage information. This would potentially allow the Patriots to determining which plays the Jets would run in different situations the next time they play each other.

I'm not sure how much sense this makes - the two teams don't play again until December 16. You would think by then the Jets will have changed their signals in fear of someone over the course of the season figuring out their signals. It only makes sense to mix things up.

Last night, while watching NBC’s Football Night in America before the Patriots played the Chargers I watched the Bob Costas interview with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Goodell had some interesting quotes for Costas - here's a couple taken from a New York Times piece:

“I’ve notified the Patriots that if there’s information that I’ve not been made aware of, or if it’s inconsistent with what I’ve been told, I will revisit” the decision, he told Bob Costas on NBC’s “Football Night in America,” which preceded last night’s San Diego-New England game."

"He said the league was monitoring all the radio frequencies assigned to teams to determine if they were being used properly. NBC showed a crew of frequency coordinators working behind the Patriots’ desk last night."

Why are they monitoring frequencies? Here's more from the Times article:

"Earlier in the day, “Fox N.F.L. Sunday,” which showed a copy of the Patriots’ video that the league confiscated, and CBS’s “The N.F.L. Today” reported that the league may investigate the Patriots’ use of audio receivers to interfere with the Jets’ quarterback-to-coach communications."

"NBC reported that the Patriots might have wired linemen to pick up the Jets’ offensive audibles."

Quarterbacks have been wearing headsets for a while now and I've always wondered if any teams had tried to jam or tap other teams wireless communications. Jamming comes to mind every time I hear a referee try to make a call when his transmitter does not work.

I'm not sure how frequencies are allocated during games but they must be secret. I'm also assuming any communications would be encrypted so listening in could be difficult. It would not be too hard to jam though if you think about it. You are given your frequency and just jam all of the others in the frequency range being used. When it comes to a referee making a call the jammer could temporarily turn the jamming transmitter off.

Looking back on a prior game it would be difficult to prove any kind of jamming of frequencies after the fact unless someone squealed. However, you can bet the NFL will be doing extensive real-time frequency monitoring (and recording) from this point forward.

I'm still a Patriots fan.

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