Cell Signals On Train To Be Boosted With Nano Tech

Make a call with a window covered in their new coating in between them

Figure 1: Make a call with a window covered in their new coating in between them

There cannot be any doubt to the terrible network experience that every passenger goes through whenever they make a train trip, the fact true for almost all regions of the world be it a bar car in Europe or America or South East Asia. Signal reception is often very poor or almost negligible during the major part of journeys. The train are, by definition, metal tubes that are very much similar to Faraday Cage. Even if you are sitting close to window, the windows too have thin metal coating that permits light into cabin but deflects heat. In crux, trains are held together by those materials that have no sync with modern day communications.

However, a team of researchers working at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) recently found a way out of it. The team got successful in creating new kind of window coatings that will help in keeping train cars cool but will open them up for better reception of data. For this purpose, they especially used a programmable laser, the team inscribed a distinct pattern over the coating of a customary car window. The pattern cannot be seen with naked eye but removes enough coating to give access to electromagnetic signals that can then pass through the window glass without affecting its insulation properties.

Andreas Schuler from EPFL’s Nanotechnology for Solar Energy Conversion Group feels that, “Measurements taken by experts from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland have demonstrated that this works. Mobile reception is just as good in train through laser-treated insulating glass as it is through ordinary glass.” Although, this new kind of window coating manufacturing process has been accepted on the laboratory level, the manufacturing world has to give its nod to it. At present, the Bern-Lotschberg-Simplon railways have decided to incorporate these coatings in their 36 trains to see how it works out.