Math Leads to Radio Chip That Mimics How Human Ear Picks Up Sound

March 22, 2010

With the number of cell phone users jumping from 34 million to 203 million in the last decade, it's clear that Americans love their cell phones. However, they also love to hate them.  A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) survey ranked cell phones as the one invention people hate the most, but can't live without.  A group of MIT engineers are using mathematics to prevent dropped calls, one of the biggest complaints about cell phones.

Dropped calls occur when the signal between the phone and a cell tower, sent at a particular frequency, is blocked. One solution is to increase the number of frequencies at which signals can be sent. According to a report* from Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science, engineers at MIT have developed a radio chip that can take in hundreds of frequencies, effectively making dropped calls a thing of the past.

 "So if you were in a cluttered environment and things were breaking up, it would suddenly switch frequency and realize things are breaking up and would switch to a different frequency," MIT engineer Rahul Sarpeshkar explained.

The engineers applied a mathematical model of the human ear to create this "super chip," which effectively mimics the way the human ear responds to different frequencies. 

Full story available here.

*MAA contributed to this report.