Tech News

Recognizing when senior citizens are at risk in the home or helping them find misplaced objects they presumed lost: The technology developed in the successful OMNICONNECT project can help people lead independent lives for longer. The researchers of Fraunhofer IZM have integrated a miniature radar system into an LED ceiling light that can track and recognize movement patterns and locate people or objects in a room.

With the approval of the Senate Chairmen and the Scientific and Technical Council of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Prof. Martin Schneider-Ramelow has received and accepted the appointment committee’s call to be the director of Fraunhofer IZM. Concluding the appointment process, Martin Schneider-Ramelow has now been entrusted with the leadership of Fraunhofer IZM as one of the world's leading research institutes in the field of microelectronics.

Atomic clocks guarantee unrivalled precision when it comes to tracking time. They help us keep our digital and analogue clocks running on time by measuring the atomic resonance in cesium atoms exposed to microwave radiation. A new generation of optical atomic clocks is now set to increase their precision by a factor of up to 100,000 by measuring higher frequencies in the near IR and visible light range.

High-performance computing, or HPC, has become a key method in many scientific areas, including pharmaceutical and climate research. However, data centres with energy-intensive supercomputers produce quite a bit of CO2. ‘Energy-optimised supercomputer networks using wind energy’ (‘Energieoptimierte Supercomputer-Netzwerke durch die Nutzung von Windenergie’, ESN4NW) is the title of a new, nationwide joint project headed by the SICP – Software Innovation Campus Paderborn at Pader-born University.

A newly launched European research project intends to establish an agile, economical, and energy efficient technology framework for photonic integrated circuits (PIC) that have the potential to revolutionize the Next Generation Central Office (NGCO) ecosystem with capacities of 51.2 terabits per second and more. The proposed gamechanger: a reconfigurable optically activated backplane and novel toolkit for photonic transceivers.

IZM scientist Ivan Ndip has accepted an appointment as full professor at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU). Since February, he has been head of the Chair of Antennas and High-Frequency System Integration at BTU.

Quantum computers are highly energy-efficient and extremely powerful supercomputers. But for these machines to realize their full potential in new applications like artificial intelligence or machine learning, researchers are hard at work at perfecting the underlying electronics to process their calculations. A team at Fraunhofer IZM are working on superconducting connections that measure a mere ten micrometers in thickness, moving the industry a substantial step closer to a future of commercially viable quantum computers.

The first meet-up of the European research project AGRARSENSE brought together the different contributors at Fraunhofer IZM in Berlin to discuss the work packages for the first project phase and to agree on the first set of goals for the cooperation. AGRARSENSE continues the project work pursued by Fraunhofer IZM in the key field of agricultural technologies.

Commercial aviation uses radar technology in their air traffic control systems to guarantee safe and smooth flights everywhere. For the AKIRA project, Fraunhofer researchers have teamed up with industry partners to develop a novel ground-based radar platform to take the same monitoring capabilities to the world of unmanned aviation. Their vision is one of secure passenger and cargo flights with automated drones in the skies above Germany’s urban centers. Starting on 28 February, a special two-day workshop on »Drone Technology for Logistics Applications« will be hosted by four Fraunhofer Institutes in Wachtberg.

Civil aviation is committed to making progress on the road towards a climate-neutral future. To make current and future aircrafts more energy-efficient and use less jet fuel, the industry needs reliable data about the durability of materials and aerodynamics in actual flight. Researchers at Fraunhofer IZM are working on behalf of Airbus Central C&T to show how sensors could be integrated in the outer shell of aircraft fuselage to achieve robust and reliable measurements even in the tough conditions in the air.