The entire functions of a radar system have been squeezed on to a single silicon chip about one fifteenth the size of a penny for the first time ... meaning it'll now fit your '64. The miniature system has been created by researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, US, who managed to fabricate all the sensing and communications components out of silicon. Their chip is capable of transmitting, receiving and directing high frequency microwaves. "Until now radar has been a very expensive very large bulky item," says Ian Gresham, an automotive radar engineer at M/A-Com in Lowell, Massachusetts. Gresham says the radar chip could mean luxury car features - such as radar-controlled parking-aids and obstacle-sensors that make driving in fog safer - could go mainstream because the systems will now cost hundreds rather than thousands of dollars. If used in communication devices, the chip could also enable lower power, higher bandwidth wireless local area networks (LANs). "The basic fundamental building blocks behind radar and communications are essentially the same," he explains. Both require the means to send and receive electromagnetic waves and to turn the waves into electrical signals. For radar the waves must be steered so that the size and angle of an object can be determined once it is detected. Source: New Scientist