Wi-Fi Shown To Interfere With Aircraft Systems 300
lukehopewell1 writes "It's official: using Wi-Fi on a plane can interfere with a pilot's navigational equipment, according to airline equipment manufacturers Honeywell Avionics and Boeing today. Boeing confirmed to ZDNet Australia that the issue does exist, but said it has not delivered any planes suffering the fault. 'Blanking of the Phase 3 Display Units has been reported during airline EMI (electromagnetic interference) certification testing of wireless broadband systems on various Next-Generation 737 aeroplanes,' Boeing said."
FAIL (Score:4, Informative)
Re:FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
Go learn about RF. At the frequencies used by Wi-Fi a resonant antenna is only a few CMs long, ie about the length of common circuit traces on the PCB's. Even if you completely shield the control units RF can still leak inside through cabling. There is no magic way to design electronics that are RF immune*, it requires real world testing to discover such faults, as happened here.
The only way to make extremely RF tolerant electronics is to use analog vacuum tube based designs (the Russians continued using tube designs into the 90's).
* Making bug free software is significantly easier.
This is a non-story (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is it for one specific module, its only at elevated power levels, not typical power levels. Lets watch the corporate media fuck this up and turn into a scare tactic to show more ads to morons.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/03/10/354179/wi-fi-interference-with-honeywell-avionics-prompts-boeing.html
What sort of equipment is this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
Most electronic designers are competent enough to put a choke at their power line and a bandpass filter at their cabling. It's not "easy" but it's done in just about any military grade electronics. I guess Boeing engineers didn't think it was necessary.
Re:FAIL (Score:4, Informative)
Re:FAIL (Score:4, Informative)
Re:FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
Most electronic designers are competent enough to put a choke at their power line and a bandpass filter at their cabling. It's not "easy" but it's done in just about any military grade electronics
And to play a violin all you need to do is to draw the bow across the strings. There's a lot more to this than theory.
A choke is inductive at a limited range of frequencies, at other frequencies it acts as a capacitor. Likewise, put a high enough frequency across a capacitor and its behavior becomes inductive. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is a very complex subject, there are no easy solutions and it's nearly impossible to have a perfect solution that works at all frequencies.
The 2.4 GHz band used in WiFi is one of the most difficult to shield. All the small metallic parts used in electronic equipment, like screws and button levers, are in the same size magnitude as the wave, so there are plenty of conductive parts to retransmit and conduct the radio frequency.
I guess Boeing engineers didn't think it was necessary.
You guessed wrong.