12 November 1998: Invisible antennas may not only hook drivers up to radar and cellular phones, but defrost foggy windows and cool the car at the same time, researchers said recently.
A team at Ohio …
12 November 1998: Invisible antennas may not only hook drivers up to radar and cellular phones, but defrost foggy windows and cool the car at the same time, researchers said recently. A team at Ohio State University (US) said they had won two patents on antennas embedded in car windows that do far more than tune the radio. “We“ll soon see car antennas not just for radios, but for radar, cellular phones and global positioning systems,” Eric Walton, a professor of electrical engineering at the school, said in a statement. “That“s why we“re developing multipurpose antennas that fit unobtrusively into the windscreens of cars.” One design uses a transparent metal film embedded between the layers of glass in the windows and windscreen of the car. Such a see-through metal is already used in some models of car to deflect sunlight and keep the interior cool. Walton and his students came up with coupling techniques to allow this metal film to act as an antenna for the car radio, the statement said. The second patent used the heater wires in many car windows. Walton and his students built a transformer that lets the wires use heating power and yet act as an antenna, too, without shorting the whole thing out. “The heating elements are already there, and they are insulated from the body of the car, so they already have many of the characteristics of an antenna,” Walton said. “The equipment to manufacture them already exists, so we knew this would be a very inexpensive way to add an antenna to an automobile.” Pittsburgh-based PPG Industries is funding the research and providing test windscreens. “If we put both these patents together, we could produce a front windscreen that can help cool a car in summer, defrost itself in winter and receive AM/FM signals but still remain completely transparent,” Walton said.