Digital Frontiers

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Wiring the Connection

Managing the explosive growth of the Internet and the demands this growth puts on traditional modes of communication interested the founders of DS2. Telephone lines provide one means of transmitting high-speed Internet. DS2 engineers thought: Why not use power lines?

“Telephones are technically easier,” says Chano Gómez, vice president of technology. “They were installed for communications and are well maintained by the telephone company. Electrical wires, whose purpose is to transmit energy, are more challenging.” But many applications could transmit information throughout a home or building using existing electrical wiring. “There are many appliances that connect to the electrical wires and generate noise, which makes it a greater challenge,” Gómez continues. This technology, though, is potentially useful when computers demand high-speed hookups around a house — for downloading large files, watching television, or backing up data — and wireless routers don’t offer enough speed or reliability.

DS2 developed a transmission system that utilizes different frequencies than electricity does. The company’s chips use digital signal processing to recover the original signal, cancelling out all the noise on the line. A home’s electric meter then blocks the Internet signal from being transmitted outside the house. Telefónica in Spain, major telecommunications companies in the UK and Portugal, and retail brands in the US that sell home networking solutions offer DS2’s link as part of their solution.

DS2 sees yet more significant opportunities ahead as smart grids are developed. Utilities will need to receive real-time information on home electricity use. “Instead of having to go to homes every month to read a meter, this can be done remotely using electrical wires, with one of our chips in the electric meter,” says Gómez.

From the Clouds

Twenty years ago, Panda Security founder Mikel Urizarbarrena had already created a number of software systems. One of them became infected with a virus that caused a ping-pong ball to drop down on the screen. In response, he started collecting viruses, simply as a hobby. But by 1990, Urizarbarrena realized that the hobby could become a business.

Today the company operates in more than 200 countries, with offices in 56. Panda Security’s products focus on security through antimalware technology, protecting both consumers and businesses from viruses, spy ware, worms, and other Internet threats.

The company has launched many technologies since its founding. In 2004 Panda engineers created a program to identify viruses proactively. To do so, engineers investigated the behavior of a file to determine if it is legitimate or potentially a virus. Building on the 2004 software, Panda Security then developed a rapid method to automatically detect and disarm the overwhelming wave of malware. Instead of scanning against a signature file within a PC, which is known to slow computer operations, the information is sent to Panda’s lab servers and scanned from what’s known as “the cloud” against a database holding 29 million examples and growing of malware. This product can deliver quick antivirus services, taking advantage of the collective intelligence of millions of computers to stay up to date on viruses and malware without affecting PC performance.

Now Panda is offering this system free for personal computers. Cloud Antivirus was launched in the spring of 2009, and within just the first few weeks, the software received millions of downloads.

Nano communication

Premo has taken the idea of communication down to the nanoscale. The company has had success in designing products for the television, power, and communications sector. Their most innovative line for the future, according to marketing director Rocío Arrupe, focuses on radio frequency identification (RFID). Premo has designed tiny RFID antennas that, to take one example, measure a car’s tire pressure and alert its monitoring system; Premo has captured 50 percent of this market. “Then we thought, we should make this smaller and cheaper — but instead of fighting to have smaller and more capable chips, let’s just see if we can do it without electronics,” says Arrupe. “As humans, we identify each other [but] not by a label, so let’s identify particles or molecules that we can attach to an object that we want to identify.”

Working with a university in Barcelona, the company has generated molecules, each with a distinct identity, to serve as markers for identity tags. Two products based on this technology are going to be in the market this year, one for an American automobile company to make its engines more efficient, and another for hospitals to tag surgical equipment.

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