Mobile phone cloning

Are your mobile phone bills unexpectedly high? There’s a chance you are the victim of ‘‘mobile cloning’’. It is also known as cell phone piracy and has been taking place throughout the world since decades. Recently this crime has come to India.

• Mobile phones have become a major part of our everyday life. On the one hand, India’s mobil phone market has grown rapidly in the last few years on the back of falling phone tariffs and handset prices, making it one of the fastest growing markets globally. On the other the number of mobile phone subscribers is exceeding that of fixed-line users. The mobile phone subscriber base has already crossed the 50-mn mark.

• Today millions of mobile phones users, be it Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), run the risk of having their phones cloned. And the worst part is that there isn’t much that you can do to prevent this.

• Such crime first came to light in January, 2005 when the Delhi police arrested a person with 20 cell phones, a laptop, a SIM scanner, and a writer. The accused was running an exchange illegally wherein he cloned CDMA-based mobile phones. He used software for the cloning and provided cheap international calls to Indian immigrants in West Asia. A similar racket came to light in Mumbai resulting in the arrest of four mobile dealers.

What is mobile phone cloning?

Mobile cloning is copying the identity of one mobile telephone to another mobile telephone.

How is a phone cloned?

The “cloning” occurs when the account number of a victim telephone user is stolen and reprogrammed into another cellular telephone. Each cellular phone has a unique pair of identifying numbers: the electronic serial number (ESN) and the mobile identification number (MIN).

The ESN/MIN pair can be cloned in a number of ways without the knowledge of the carrier or subscriber through the use of electronic scanning devices. After the ESN/MIN pair is captured, the cloner reprograms or alters the microchip of any wireless phone to create a clone of the wireless phone from which the ESN/MIN pair was stolen. The entire programming process takes 10-15 minutes per phone. Any call made with cloned phone are billed to and traced to a legitimate phone account. Innocent citizens end up with unexplained monthly phone bills.

What is an ESN/MIN pair?

The ESN is the serial number of your cellular telephone. And the MIN is simply the phone number of the cellular telephone.

How can mobile phone thieves detect ESN/MIN pair?

Cellular thieves can capture ESN/MINs using devices such as cell phone ESN reader or digital data interpreters (DDI). DDIs are devices specially manufactured to intercept ESN/MINs. By simply sitting near busy roads where the volume of cellular traffic is high, cellular thieves monitoring the radio wave transmissions from the cell phones of legitimate subscribers can capture ESN/MIN pair.

Numbers can be recorded by hand, one-by-one, or stored in the box and later downloaded to a computer. ESN/MIN readers can also be used from inside an offender’s home, office, or hotel room, increasing the difficulty of detection.

How is the ESN/MIN pair programmed in another phone?

To reprogram a phone, the ESN/MINs are transferred using a computer loaded with specialised software, or a “copycat” box, a device whose sole purpose is to clone phones. The devices are connected to the cellular handsets and the new identifying information is entered into the phone. There are also more discreet, concealable devices used to clone cellular phones. Plugs and ES-Pros which are about the size of a pager or small calculator do not require computers or copycat boxes for cloning. The entire programming process takes ten-15 minutes per phone.

What is the impact of cloning?

Each year, the mobile phone industry loses millions of dollars in revenue because of the criminal actions of persons who are able to reconfigure mobile phones so that their calls are billed to other phones owned by innocent third persons. Often these cloned phones are used to place hundreds of calls, often long distance, even to foreign countries, resulting in thousands of dollars in air time and long distance charges. Cellular telephone companies do not require their customers to pay for any charges illegally made to their account, no matter how great the cost. But some portion of the cost of these illegal telephone calls is passed along to cellular telephone consumers as a whole.

Many criminals use cloned cellular telephones for illegal activities, because their calls are not billed to them, and are therefore much more difficult to trace.

This phenomenon is especially prevalent in drug crimes. Drug dealers need to be in constant contact with their sources of supply and their confederates on the streets. Traffickers acquire cloned phones at a minimum cost, make dozens of calls, and then throw the phone away after as little as a days' use.

In the same way, criminals who pose a threat to our national security, such as terrorists, have been known to use cloned phones to thwart law enforcement efforts aimed at tracking their whereabouts.

Do GSM and CDMS sets run the risk of ‘cloning’?

Looking at the recent case, it is quite possible to clone both GSM and CDMA sets. The accused in the Delhi case used software called Patagonia to clone only CDMA phones (Reliance and Tata Indicom). However, there are software packages that can be used to clone even GSM phones (e.g. Airtel, Hutch, Idea). In order to clone a GSM phone, knowledge of the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) or instrument number is sufficient.

What are GSM and CDMS mobile phone sets?

CDMA is one of the newer digital technologies used in Canada, the US, Australia, and some South-eastern Asian countries (e.g. Hong Kong and South Korea). CDMA differs from GSM and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) by its use of spread spectrum techniques for transmitting voice or data over the air. Rather than dividing the radio frequency spectrum into separate user channels by frequency slices or time slots, spread spectrum technology separates users by assigning them digital codes within the same broad spectrum. Advantages of CDMA include higher user capacity and immunity from interference by other signals.

GSM is a digital mobile telephone system that is widely used in Europe and other parts of the world. GSM uses a variation of TDMA and is the most widely used of the three digital wireless telephone technologies. GSM digitises and compresses data, then sends it down a channel with two other streams of user data, each in its own time slot. It operates at either the 900 MHz or 1,800 MHz frequency band.

Nanorobotics

Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometres (10-9 metres).

• More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the still largely hypothetical nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots. Nanorobots (nanobots, nanoids or nanites) would be typically devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometers and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. As no artificial non-biological nanorobots have so far been created, they remain a hypothetical concept at this time.

• Another definition sometimes used is a robot which allows precision interactions with nanoscale objects, or can manipulate with nanoscale resolution. Following this definition even a large apparatus such as an atomic force microscope can be considered a nanorobotic instrument when configured to perform nanomanipulation. Also, macroscale robots or microrobots which can move with nanoscale precision can also be considered nanorobots.

• Nanomachines are largely in the research-and-development phase, but some primitive molecular machines have been tested. An example is a sensor having a switch approximately 1.5 nanometers across, capable of counting specific molecules in a chemical sample. The first useful applications of nanomachines, if such are ever built, might be in medical technology, where they might be used to identify cancer cells and destroy them.
  

• Another potential application is the detection of toxic chemicals, and the measurement of their concentrations, in the environment. Recently, Rice University has demonstrated a single-molecule car which is developed by a chemical process and includes buckyballs for wheels. It is actuated by controlling the environmental temperature and by positioning a scanning tunneling microscope tip. Basic nanomachines are also in use in other areas. Nanotechnology coatings are already being used to make clothing with stain-resistant fibers and are used on swim suits to repel water, reduce friction with the water, and allow swimmers to go faster. Nanotech powders are being used to create high-performance sun-screen lotions and nanoparticles are helping to deliver drugs to targeted tissues in the body.

Nanorobotics theory

• Since nanorobots would be microscopic in size, it would probably be necessary for very large numbers of them to work together to perform macroscopic tasks. These nanorobot swarms, both those which are incapable of replication (as in utility fog) and those which are capable of unconstrained replication in the natural environment (as in grey goo and its less common variants), are found in many science fiction stories, such as the Borg nanoprobes in Star Trek, nanogenes in the Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child", nanites in "I, Robot", "Stargate SG1" and nanobots in Red Dwarf. The T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be another example of a nanorobot swarm. The word "nanobot" (also "nanite", "nanogene", or "nanoant") is often used to indicate this fictional context and is an informal or even pejorative term to refer to the engineering concept of nanorobots. The word nanorobot is the correct technical term in the nonfictional context of serious engineering studies.

• Some proponents of nanorobotics, in reaction to the grey goo scare scenarios that they earlier helped to propagate, hold the view that nanorobots capable of replication outside of a restricted factory environment do not form a necessary part of a purported productive nanotechnology, and that the process of self-replication, if it were ever to be developed, could be made inherently safe. They further assert that free-foraging replicators are in fact absent from their current plans for developing and using molecular manufacturing.

• In such plans, future medical nanotechnology has been posited to employ nanorobots injected into the patient to perform treatment on a cellular level. Such nanorobots intended for use in medicine are posited to be non-replicating, as replication would needlessly increase device complexity, reduce reliability, and interfere with the medical mission. Instead, medical nanorobots are posited to be manufactured in hypothetical, carefully controlled nanofactories in which nanoscale machines would be solidly integrated into a supposed desktop-scale machine that would build macroscopic products.

• The most detailed discussions of nanorobotics, including specific design issues such as sensing, power communication, navigation, manipulation, locomotion, and onboard computation, have been presented in the medical context of nanomedicine by Robert Freitas. Although much of these discussions remain at the level of unbuildable generality and do not approach the level of detailed engineering, the Nanofactory Collaboration, founded by Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle in 2000, is a focused ongoing effort involving 23 researchers from 10 organizations and 4 countries that is developing a practical research agenda specifically aimed at developing positionally-controlled diamond mechanosynthesis and a diamondoid nanofactory that would be capable of building diamondoid medical nanorobots.

• As a secondary meaning, "nanorobotics" is also sometimes used to refer to attempts to miniaturize robots or machines to any size, including the development of robots the size of insects or smaller.

Nubot

Nubot is an abbreviation for "Nucleic Acid Robots." Nubots are synthetic robotics devices at the nanoscale. Representative nubots include the several DNA walkers reported by Ned Seeman's group at NYU, Niles Pierce's group at Caltech, John Reif's group at Duke University, Chengde Mao's group at Purdue, and Andrew Turberfield's group at the University of Oxford.

Nanobots in fiction

Nanobots have been a recurring theme in many science-fiction novels and movies.

Potential Applications

• Early diagnosis and targeted drug delivery for cancer.
• Biomedical instrumentation.
• Surgery.
• Pharmacokinetics.
• Diabetes.

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is technology based on biology, especially when used in agriculture, food science, and medicine. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity defines biotechnology as:

"Biotechnology has contributed towards the exploitation of biological organisms or biological processes through modern techniques, which could be profitably used in medicine, agriculture, animal husbandry and environmental cloning."

• Biotechnology is often used to refer to genetic engineering technology of the 21st century, however the term encompasses a wider range and history of procedures for modifying biological organisms according to the needs of humanity, going back to the initial modifications of native plants into improved food crops through artificial selection and hybridization. Bioengineering is the science upon which all Biotechnological applications are based. With the development of new approaches and modern techniques, traditional biotechnology industries are also acquiring new horizons enabling them to improve the quality of their products and increase the productivity of their systems.

• Before 1971, the term, biotechnology, was primarily used in the food processing and agriculture industries. Since the 1970s, it began to be used by the Western scientific establishment to refer to laboratory-based techniques being developed in biological research, such as recombinant DNA or tissue culture-based processes, or horizontal gene transfer in living plants, using vectors such as the Agrobacterium bacteria to transfer DNA into a host organism. In fact, the term should be used in a much broader sense to describe the whole range of methods, both ancient and modern, used to manipulate organic materials to reach the demands of food production. So the term could be defined as, "The application of indigenous and/or scientific knowledge to the management of (parts of) microorganisms, or of cells and tissues of higher organisms, so that these supply goods and services of use to the food industry and its consumers.

• Biotechnology combines disciplines like genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, embryology and cell biology, which are in turn linked to practical disciplines like chemical engineering, information technology, and robotics.

Applications

Biotechnology has applications in four major industrial areas, including health care (medical), crop production and agriculture, non food (industrial) uses of crops and other products (e.g. biodegradable plastics, vegetable oil, biofuels), and environmental uses.

For example, one application of biotechnology is the directed use of organisms for the manufacture of organic products (examples include beer and milk products). Another example is using naturally present bacteria by the mining industry in bioleaching. Biotechnology is also used to recycle, treat waste, clean up sites contaminated by industrial activities (bioremediation), and also to produce biological weapons.

A series of derived terms have been coined to identify several branches of biotechnology, for example:

• Red biotechnology is applied to medical processes. Some examples are the designing of organisms to produce antibiotics, and the engineering of genetic cures through genomic manipulation.

• Green biotechnology is biotechnology applied to agricultural processes. An example would be the selection and domestication of plants via micropropagation. Another example is the designing of transgenic plants to grow under specific environmental conditions or in the presence (or absence) of certain agricultural chemicals. One hope is that green biotechnology might produce more environmentally friendly solutions than traditional industrial agriculture. An example of this is the engineering of a plant to express a pesticide, thereby eliminating the need for external application of pesticides. An example of this would be Bt corn. Whether or not green biotechnology products such as this are ultimately more environmentally friendly is a topic of considerable debate.

• White biotechnology , also known as industrial biotechnology, is biotechnology applied to industrial processes. An example is the designing of an organism to produce a useful chemical. Another example is the using of enzymes as industrial catalysts to either produce valuable chemicals or destroy hazardous/polluting chemicals (examples using oxidoreductases are given in Feng Xu (2005) “Applications of oxidoreductases: Recent progress” Ind. Biotechnol. 1, 38-50 [1]). White biotechnology tends to consume less in resources than traditional processes used to produce industrial goods.

• Blue biotechnology is a term that has been used to describe the marine and aquatic applications of biotechnology, but its use is relatively rare.

• The investments and economic output of all of these types of applied biotechnologies form what has been described as the bioeconomy.

• Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field which addresses biological problems using computational techniques, and makes the rapid organization and analysis of biological data possible. The field may also be referred to as computational biology, and can be defined as, "conceptualizing biology in terms of molecules and then applying informatics techniques to understand and organize the information associated with these molecules, on a large scale." Bioinformatics plays a key role in various areas, such as functional genomics, structural genomics, and proteomics, and forms a key component in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector.

Medicine

In medicine, modern biotechnology finds promising applications in such areas as

• pharmacogenomics;
• drug production;
• enetic testing; and
• gene therapy.

Human Genome Project

• The Human Genome Project is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) that aims to generate a high-quality reference sequence for the entire human genome and identify all the human genes.

• The DOE and its predecessor agencies were assigned by the U.S. Congress to develop new energy resources and technologies and to pursue a deeper understanding of potential health and environmental risks posed by their production and use. In 1986, the DOE announced its Human Genome Initiative. Shortly thereafter, the DOE and National Institutes of Health developed a plan for a joint Human Genome Project (“HGP”), which officially began in 1990.

• The HGP was originally planned to last 15 years. However, rapid technological advances and worldwide participation accelerated the completion date to 2005. Already it has enabled gene hunters to pinpoint genes associated with more than 30 disorders.

Current Research

• In January 2008, Christopher S. Chen made an exciting discovery that could potentially alter the future of medicine. He found that cell signaling that is normally biochemically regulated could be simulated with magnetic nanoparticles attached to a cell surface. The discovery of Donald Ingber, Robert Mannix, and Sanjay Kumar, who found that a nanobead can be attached to a monovalent ligand, and that these compounds can bind to Mast cells without triggering the clustering response, inspired Chen’s research. Usually, when a multivalent ligand attaches to the cell’s receptors, the signal pathway is activated. However, these nanobeads only initiated cell signaling when a magnetic field was applied to the area, thereby causing the nanobeads to cluster.
  

• It is important to note that this clustering triggered the cellular response, not merely the force applied to the cell due to the receptor binding. This experiment was carried out several times with time-varying activation cycles. However, there is no reason to suggest that the response time could not be reduced to seconds or even milliseconds. This low response time has exciting applications in the medical field. Currently it takes minutes or hours for a pharmaceutical to affect its environment, and when it does so, the changes are irreversible. With the current research in mind, though, a future of millisecond response times and reversible effects is possible. Imagine being able to treat various allergic responses, colds, and other such ailments almost instantaneously. This future has not yet arrived, however, and further research and testing must be done in this area, but this is an important step in the right direction.

Biological engineering

• Biotechnological engineering or biological engineering is a branch of engineering that focuses on biotechnologies and biological science. It includes different disciplines such as biochemical engineering, biomedical engineering, bio-process engineering, biosystem engineering and so on. Because of the novelty of the field, the definition of a bioengineer is still undefined. However, in general it is an integrated approach of fundamental biological sciences and traditional engineering principles.

• Bioengineers are often employed to scale up bio processes from the laboratory scale to the manufacturing scale. Moreover, as with most engineers, they often deal with management, economic and legal issues. Since patents and regulation (e.g. FDA regulation in the U.S.) are very important issues for biotech enterprises, bioengineers are often required to have knowledge related to these issues.
  

• The increasing number of biotech enterprises is likely to create a need for bioengineers in the years to come. Many universities throughout the world are now providing programs in bioengineering and biotechnology (as independent programs or specialty programs within more established engineering fields).

GSM technology

Global System for Mobile communications (GSM: originally from Groupe Spécial Mobile) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world.

Its promoter, the GSM Association, estimates that 82% of the global mobile market uses the standard. GSM is used by over 2 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories. Its ubiquity makes international roaming very common between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts of the world. GSM differs from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech channels are digital call quality, and so is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system. This has also meant that data communication were built into the system using the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

• The ubiquity of the GSM standard has been advantageous to both consumers (who benefit from the ability to roam and switch carriers without switching phones) and also to network operators (who can choose equipment from any of the many vendors implementing GSM). GSM also pioneered a low-cost alternative to voice calls, the Short message service (SMS, also called "text messaging"), which is now supported on other mobile standards as well.

• Newer versions of the standard were backward-compatible with the original GSM phones. For example, Release '97 of the standard added packet data capabilities, by means of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Release '99 introduced higher speed data transmission using Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE).

History

• In 1982, the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) created the Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) to develop a standard for a mobile telephone system that could be used across Europe. In 1987, a memorandum of understanding was signed by 13 countries to develop a common cellular telephone system across Europe.

• In 1989, GSM responsibility was transferred to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and phase I of the GSM specifications were published in 1990. The first GSM network was launched in 1991 by Radiolinja in Finland with joint technical infrastructure maintenance from Ericsson. By the end of 1993, over a million subscribers were using GSM phone networks being operated by 70 carriers across 48 countries.

Network Structure

The network behind the GSM system seen by the customer is large and complicated in order to provide all of the services which are required. It is divided into a number of sections and these are each covered in separate articles.

• the Base Station Subsystem (the base stations and their controllers).
• the Network and Switching Subsystem (the part of the network most similar to a fixed network). This is sometimes also just called the core network.
• the GPRS Core Network (the optional part which allows packet based Internet connections).
• all of the elements in the system combine to produce many GSM services such as voice calls and SMS.

Subscriber Identity Module

• One of the key features of GSM is the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), commonly known as a SIM card. The SIM is a detachable smart card containing the user's subscription information and phonebook. This allows the user to retain his or her information after switching handsets. Alternatively, the user can also change operators while retaining the handset simply by changing the SIM. Some operators will block this by allowing the phone to use only a single SIM, or only a SIM issued by them; this practice is known as SIM locking, and is illegal in some countries.

• In Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States many operators lock the mobiles they sell. This is done because the price of the mobile phone is typically subsidised with revenue from subscriptions, and operators want to try to avoid subsidising competitor's mobiles. A subscriber can usually contact the provider to remove the lock for a fee, utilize private services to remove the lock, or make use of ample software and websites available on the Internet to unlock the handset themselves. While most web sites offer the unlocking for a fee, some do it for free. The locking applies to the handset, identified by its International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, not to the account (which is identified by the SIM card). It is always possible to switch to another (non-locked) handset if such a handset is available.

• Some providers will unlock the phone for free if the customer has held an account for a certain time period. Third party unlocking services exist that are often quicker and lower cost than that of the operator. In most countries, removing the lock is legal. United States-based T-Mobile provides free unlocking services to their customers after 3 months of subscription.[citation needed]

• In countries like Belgium, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore etc., all phones are sold unlocked. However, in Belgium, it is unlawful for operators there to offer any form of subsidy on the phone's price. This was also the case in Finland until April 1, 2006, when selling subsidized combinations of handsets and accounts became legal, though operators have to unlock phones free of charge after a certain period (at most 24 months).

GSM security

• GSM was designed with a moderate level of security. The system was designed to authenticate the subscriber using a pre-shared key and challenge-response. Communications between the subscriber and the base station can be encrypted. The development of UMTS introduces an optional USIM, that uses a longer authentication key to give greater security, as well as mutually authenticating the network and the user - whereas GSM only authenticated the user to the network (and not vice versa). The security model therefore offers confidentiality and authentication, but limited authorization capabilities, and no non-repudiation.

• GSM uses several cryptographic algorithms for security. The A5/1 and A5/2 stream ciphers are used for ensuring over-the-air voice privacy. A5/1 was developed first and is a stronger algorithm used within Europe and the United States; A5/2 is weaker and used in other countries. A large security advantage of GSM over earlier systems is that the cryptographic key stored on the SIM card is never sent over the wireless interface. Serious weaknesses have been found in both algorithms, however, and it is possible to break A5/2 in real-time in a ciphertext-only attack. The system supports multiple algorithms so operators may replace that cipher with a stronger one.

Embedded Systems

An embedded system is a special-purpose computer system designed to perform one or a few dedicated functions, sometimes with real-time computing constraints. It is usually embedded as part of a complete device including hardware and mechanical parts. In contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer, can do many different tasks depending on programming. Embedded systems have become very important today as they control many of the common devices we use.

• Since the embedded system is dedicated to specific tasks, design engineers can optimize it, reducing the size and cost of the product, or increasing the reliability and performance. Some embedded systems are mass-produced, benefiting from economies of scale.

• Physically, embedded systems range from portable devices such as digital watches and MP3 players, to large stationary installations like traffic lights, factory controllers, or the systems controlling nuclear power plants. Complexity varies from low, with a single microcontroller chip, to very high with multiple units, peripherals and networks mounted inside a large chassis or enclosure.
  

• In general, "embedded system" is not an exactly defined term, as many systems have some element of programmability. For example, Handheld computers share some elements with embedded systems — such as the operating systems and microprocessors which power them — but are not truly embedded systems, because they allow different applications to be loaded and peripherals to be connected.

Examples of embedded systems

Embedded systems span all aspects of modern life and examples of their use is numerous.

• Telecommunications systems employ numerous embedded systems from telephone switches for the network to mobile phones at the end-user. Computer networking uses dedicated routers and network bridges to route data.

• Consumer electronics include personal digital assistants (PDAs), mp3 players, mobile phones, videogame consoles, digital cameras, DVD players, GPS receivers, and printers. More and more household appliances like the microwave ovens and washing machines are including embedded systems to add advanced functionality. Advanced HVAC systems use networked thermostats to more accurately and efficiently control temperature that can change by time of day and season. Home automation uses wired- and wireless-networking that can be used to control lights, climate, security, audio/visual, etc., all of which use embedded devices for sensing and controlling.

• Transportation systems from flight to automobiles are also increasingly using embedded systems. New airplanes contain advanced avionics such as inertial guidance systems and GPS receivers that also have considerable safety requirements. Various electric motors — brushless DC motors, induction motors and DC motors — are using electric/electronic motor controllers. Automobiles, electric vehicles. and hybrid vehicles are increasingly using embedded systems to maximize efficiency and reduce pollution. Other automotive safety systems such as anti-lock braking system (ABS), Electronic Stability Control (ESC/ESP), and automatic four-wheel drive.

• Medical equipment is continuing to advance with more embedded systems for vital signs monitoring, electronic stethoscopes for amplifying sounds, and various medical imaging (PET, SPECT, CT, MRI) for non-invasive internal inspections.

Characteristics

• Embedded systems are designed to do some specific task, rather than be a general-purpose computer for multiple tasks. Some also have real-time performance constraints that must be met, for reason such as safety and usability; others may have low or no performance requirements,allowing the system hardware to be simplified to reduce costs.

• Embedded systems are not always separate devices. Most often they are physically built-in to the devices they control.[citation needed].

• The software written for embedded systems is often called firmware, and is stored in read-only memory or Flash memory chips rather than a disk drive. It often runs with limited computer hardware resources: small or no keyboard, screen, and little memory.

User interfaces

• Embedded systems range from no user interface at all — dedicated only to one task — to full user interfaces similar to desktop operating systems in devices such as PDAs.

Simple systems

• Simple embedded devices use buttons, LEDs, and small character- or digit-only displays, often with a simple menu system.

In more complex systems

• A full graphical screen, with touch sensing or screen-edge buttons provides flexibility while minimising space used: the meaning of the buttons can change with the screen, and selection involves the natural behavior of pointing at what's desired.

• Handheld systems often have a screen with a "joystick button" for a pointing device.

• The rise of the World Wide Web has given embedded designers another quite different option: providing a web page interface over a network connection. This avoids the cost of a sophisticated display, yet provides complex input and display capabilities when needed, on another computer. This is successful for remote, permanently installed equipment. In particular, routers take advantage of this ability.

CPU platform

• Embedded processors can be broken into two distinct categories: microprocessors (μP) and microcontrollers (μC). Microcontrollers have built-in peripherals on the chip, reducing size of the system.

• There are many different CPU architectures used in embedded designs such as ARM, MIPS, Coldfire/68k, PowerPC, x86, PIC, 8051, Atmel AVR, Renesas H8, SH, V850, FR-V, M32R, Z80, Z8, etc. This in contrast to the desktop computer market, which is currently limited to just a few competing architectures.

• PC/104 and PC/104+ are a typical base for small, low-volume embedded and ruggedized system design. These often use DOS, Linux, NetBSD, or an embedded real-time operating system such as MicroC/OS-II, QNX or VxWorks.

• A common configuration for very-high-volume embedded systems is the system on a chip (SoC), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), for which the CPU core was purchased and added as part of the chip design. A related scheme is to use a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and program it with all the logic, including the CPU.

Peripherals

Embedded Systems talk with the outside world via peripherals, such as:

• Serial Communication Interfaces (SCI): RS-232, RS-422, RS-485 etc
• Synchronous Serial Communication Interface: I2C, JTAG, SPI, SSC and ESSI
• Universal Serial Bus (USB)
• Networks: Ethernet, Controller Area Network, LonWorks, etc
• Timers: PLL(s), Capture/Compare and Time Processing Units
• Discrete IO: aka General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO)
• Analog to Digital/Digital to Analog (ADC/DAC)

Tools

As for other software, embedded system designers use compilers, assemblers, and debuggers to develop embedded system software. However, they may also use some more specific tools:

• In circuit debuggers or emulators (see next section).
• Utilities to add a checksum or CRC to a program, so the embedded system can check if the program is valid.
• For systems using digital signal processing, developers may use a math workbench such as MATLAB, Simulink, MathCad, or Mathematica to simulate the mathematics. They might also use libraries for both the host and target which eliminates developing DSP routines as done in DSPnano RTOS and Unison Operating System.
• Custom compilers and linkers may be used to improve optimisation for the particular hardware.
• An embedded system may have its own special language or design tool, or add enhancements to an existing language such as Forth or Basic.
• Another alternative is to add a Real-time operating system or Embedded operating system, which may have DSP capabilities like DSPnano RTOS.

Software tools can come from several sources:

• Software companies that specialize in the embedded market
• Ported from the GNU software development tools
• Sometimes, development tools for a personal computer can be used if the embedded processor is a close relative to a common PC processor.

As the complexity of embedded systems grows, higher level tools and operating systems are migrating into machinery where it makes sense. For example, cellphones, personal digital assistants and other consumer computers often need significant software that is purchased or provided by a person other than the manufacturer of the electronics. In these systems, an open programming environment such as Linux, NetBSD, OSGi or Embedded Java is required so that the third-party software provider can sell to a large market.

Debugging

Embedded Debugging may be performed at different levels, depending on the facilities available. From simplest to most sophisticated they can be roughly grouped into the following areas:

• Interactive resident debugging, using the simple shell provided by the embedded operating system (e.g. Forth and Basic)

• External debugging using logging or serial port output to trace operation using either a monitor in flash or using a debug server like the Remedy Debugger which even works for heterogeneous multicore systems.
• An in-circuit debugger (ICD), a hardware device that connects to the microprocessor via a JTAG or NEXUS interface. This allows the operation of the microprocessor to be controlled externally, but is typically restricted to specific debugging capabilities in the processor.
• An in-circuit emulator replaces the microprocessor with a simulated equivalent, providing full control over all aspects of the microprocessor.
• A complete emulator provides a simulation of all aspects of the hardware, allowing all of it to be controlled and modified, and allowing debugging on a normal PC.
• Unless restricted to external debugging, the programmer can typically load and run software through the tools, view the code running in the processor, and start or stop its operation. The view of the code may be as assembly code or source-code.
  

Reliability

Embedded systems often reside in machines that are expected to run continuously for years without errors, and in some cases recover by themselves if an error occurs. Therefore the software is usually developed and tested more carefully than that for personal computers, and unreliable mechanical moving parts such as disk drives, switches or buttons are avoided.

Recovery from errors may be achieved with techniques such as a watchdog timer that resets the computer unless the software periodically notifies the watchdog.

Specific reliability issues may include:

• The system cannot safely be shut down for repair, or it is too inaccessible to repair. Solutions may involve subsystems with redundant spares that can be switched over to, or software "limp modes" that provide partial function. Examples include space systems, undersea cables, navigational beacons, bore-hole systems, and automobiles.

• The system must be kept running for safety reasons. "Limp modes" are less tolerable. Often backups are selected by an operator. Examples include aircraft navigation, reactor control systems, safety-critical chemical factory controls, train signals, engines on single-engine aircraft.

• The system will lose large amounts of money when shut down: Telephone switches, factory controls, bridge and elevator controls, funds transfer and market making, automated sales and service.

High vs Low Volume

For high volume systems such as portable music players or mobile phones, minimizing cost is usually the primary design consideration. Engineers typically select hardware that is just “good enough” to implement the necessary functions.

For low-volume or prototype embedded systems, general purpose computers may be adapted by limiting the programs or by replacing the operating system with a real-time operating system.

Robotics

Robotics is the science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application. Robotics requires a working knowledge of electronics, mechanics and software, and is usually accompanied by a large working knowledge of many subjects. A person working in the field is a roboticist.

• Although the appearance and capabilities of robots vary vastly, all robots share the features of a mechanical, movable structure under some form of autonomous control. The structure of a robot is usually mostly mechanical and can be called a kinematic chain (its functionality being akin to the skeleton of the human body). The chain is formed of links (its bones), actuators (its muscles) and joints which can allow one or more degrees of freedom.
  
• Most contemporary robots use open serial chains in which each link connects the one before to the one after it. These robots are called serial robots and often resemble the human arm. Some robots, such as the Stewart platform, use closed parallel kinematic chains. Other structures, such as those that mimic the mechanical structure of humans, various animals and insects, are comparatively rare.
  
• However, the development and use of such structures in robots is an active area of research (e.g. biomechanics). Robots used as manipulators have an end effector mounted on the last link. This end effector can be anything from a welding device to a mechanical hand used to manipulate the environment.

Etymology

• The word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Runaround", published in March 1942 in Astounding Science Fiction. However, Asimov was unaware that he was coining a new term. The design of electrical devices is called electronics, so the design of robots is called robotics.
  
• Before the coining of the term, however, there was interest in ideas similar to robotics (namely automata and androids) dating as far back as the 8th or 7th century BC. In the Iliad, the god Hephaestus made talking handmaidens out of gold. Archytas of Tarentum is created with creating a mechanical Pigeon in 400 BC. Robots are used in industrial, military, exploration, home making, and academic and research applications.

Manipulation

• Robots which must work in the real world require some way to manipulate objects; pick up, modify, destroy or otherwise have an effect. Thus the 'hands' of a robot are often referred to as end effectors while the arm is referred to as a manipulator. Most robot arms have replacable effectors, each allowing them to perform some small range of tasks. Some have a fixed manipulator which cannot be replaced, while a few have one very general purpose manipulator, for example a humanoid hand.

• * Grippers: A common effector is the gripper. In its simplest manifestation it consists of just two fingers which can open and close to pick up and let go of a range of small objects. See End effectors .

• * Vacuum Grippers: Pick and place robots for electronic components and for large objects like car windscreens, will often use very simple vacuum grippers. These are very simple astrictive devices, but can hold very large loads provided the prehension surface is smooth enough to ensure suction.

• * General purpose effectors: Some advanced robots are beginning to use fully humanoid hands, like the Shadow Hand (right), or the Schunk hand. These highly dexterous manipulators, with as many as 20 degrees of freedom and hundreds of tactile sensors can be difficult to control. The computer must consider a great deal of information, and decide on the best way to manipulate an object from many possibilities.

Human interaction

• If robots are to work effectively in homes and other non-industrial environments, the way they are instructed to perform their jobs, and especially how they will be told to stop will be of critical importance. The people who interact with them may have little or no training in robotics, and so any interface will need to be extremely intuitive. Science fiction authors also typically assume that robots will eventually communicate with humans by talking, gestures and facial expressions, rather than a command-line interface. Although speech would be the most natural way for the human to communicate, it is quite unnatural for the robot. It will be quite a while before robots interact as naturally as the fictional C3P0.

• * Speech Recognition: Interpreting the continuous flow of sounds coming from a human, in real time, is a difficult task for a computer, mostly because of the great variability of speech. The same word, spoken by the same person may sound different depending on local acoustics, volume, the previous word, whether or not the speaker has a cold, etc.. It becomes even harder when the speaker has a different accent. Nevertheless, great strides have been made in the field since Davis, Biddulph, and Balashek designed the first "voice input system" which recognized "ten digits spoken by a single user with 100% accuracy" in 1952. Currently, the best systems can recognise continuous, natural speech, up to 160 words per minute, with an accuracy of 95%.
  
• * Gestures: One can imagine, in the future, explaining to a robot chef how to make a pastry, or asking directions from a robot police officer. On both of these occasions, making hand gestures would aid the verbal descriptions. In the first case, the robot would be recognising gestures made by the human, and perhaps repeating them for confirmation. In the second case, the robot police officer would gesture to indicate "down the road, then turn right". It is quite likely that gestures will make up a part of the interaction between humans and robots. A great many systems have been developed to recognise human hand gestures.

• * Facial expression: Facial expressions can provide rapid feedback on the progress of a dialog between two humans, and soon it may be able to do the same for humans and robots. A robot should know how to approach a human, judging by their facial expression and body language. Whether the person is happy, frightened or crazy-looking affects the type of interaction expected of the robot. Likewise, a robot like Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions, allowing it to have meaningful social exchanges with humans.

• * Personality: Many of the robots of science fiction have personality, and that is something which may or may not be desirable in the commercial robots of the future. Nevertheless, researchers are trying to create robots which appear to have a personality: i.e. they use sounds, facial expressions and body language to try to convey an internal state, which may be joy, sadness or fear. One commercial example is Pleo, a toy robot dinosaur, which can exhibit several apparent emotions.

Control

• The mechanical structure of a robot must be controlled to perform tasks. The control of a robot involves three distinct phases - perception, processing and action (robotic paradigms). Sensors give information about the environment or the robot itself (e.g. the position of its joints or its end effector).
  
• Using strategies from the field of control theory, this information is processed to calculate the appropriate signals to the actuators (motors) which move the mechanical structure. The control of a robot involves path planning, pattern recognition, obstacle avoidance, etc. More complex and adaptable control strategies can be referred to as artificial intelligence.

Environmental Technology

Environmental technology, "green technology" or "clean technology" (also abbreviated as CleanTech) is the application of the environmental sciences to conserve the natural environment and resources, and by curbing the negative impacts of human involvement.

• Sustainable development is the core of environmental technologies. When applying sustainable development as a solution for environmental issues, the solutions need to be socially equitable, economically viable, and environmentally sound. Green anarchists, criticise the concept due to their view of technology requiring the exploitation of the environment, thus making the idea contradictory.
• Some environmental technologies that retain sustainable development are; recycling, water purification, sewage treatment, remediation, flue gas treatment, solid waste management, renewable energy, and others.
  

Related technologies

• Some technologies assist directly with energy conservation, while other technologies are emerging that help the environment by reducing the amount of waste produced by human activities. Energy sources such as solar power create less problems for the environment than traditional sources of energy like coal and petroleum. Scientists continue to search for clean energy alternatives to our current power production methods. Some technologies such as anaerobic digestion produce renewable energy from waste materials.
  
• The global reduction of greenhouse gases is dependent on the adoption of energy conservation technologies at industrial level as well as this clean energy generation. That includes using unleaded petrol, solar energy and hybrid cars which do not produce a lot of harmful gases.
  
• Since electric motors consume 60% of all electricity generated, advanced energy efficient electric motor (and electric generator) technology that are cost effective to encourage their application, such as the brushless wound-rotor doubly-fed electric machine and energy saving module, can dramatically cut the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) that would otherwise be introduced to the atmosphere.

Sustainable Development

• Sustainable development has been defined as balancing the fulfillment of human needs with the protection of the natural environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future. The term was used by the Brundtland Commission which coined what has become the most often-quoted definition of sustainable development as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
• The field of sustainable development can be conceptually divided into four general dimensions: social, economic, environmental and institutional. The first three dimensions address key principles of sustainability, while the final dimension addresses key institutional policy and capacity issues.
  

Waste Management

• Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal of waste materials, usually ones produced by human activity, in an effort to reduce their effect on human health or local aesthetics or amenity. A subfocus in recent decades has been to reduce waste materials' effect on the natural world and the environment and to recover resources from them. Waste management can involve solid, liquid or gaseous substances with different methods and fields of expertise for each.
• Waste management practices differ for developed and developing nations, for urban and rural areas, and for residential, industrial, and commercial producers. Waste management for non-hazardous residential and institutional waste in metropolitan areas is usually the responsibility of local government authorities, while management for non-hazardous commercial and industrial waste is usually the responsibility of the generator.
• The waste hierarchy refers to the "3 Rs" reduce, reuse and recycle, which classify waste management strategies according to their desirability. It has remained the cornerstone of most waste minimisation strategies.
  

The WBG

• The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations responsible for providing finance and advice to countries for the purposes of economic development and eliminating poverty. The Bank came into formal existence on 27 December 1945 following international ratification of the Bretton Woods agreements, which emerged from the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (1 July - 22 July 1944). Commencing operations on 25 June 1946, it approved its first loan on 9 May 1947 ($250m to France for postwar reconstruction, in real terms the largest loan issued by the Bank to date).
  
• Its five agencies are: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD); International Finance Corporation (IFC); International Development Association (IDA); Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The term "World Bank" generally refers to the IBRD and IDA, whereas the World Bank Group is used to refer to the institutions collectively.
• The World Bank's (i.e. the IBRD and IDA's) activities are focused on developing countries, in fields such as human development (e.g. education, health), agriculture and rural development (e.g. irrigation, rural services), environmental protection (e.g. pollution reduction, establishing and enforcing regulations), infrastructure (e.g. roads, urban regeneration, electricity), and governance (e.g. anti-corruption, legal institutions development).
  

Brain fingerprinting

A patented new technique of proven accuracy in US government tests

• Dr. Lawrence A. Farwell has invented, developed, proven, and patented the technique of Farwell Brain Fingerprinting, a new computer-based technology to identify the perpetrator of a crime accurately and scientifically by measuring brain-wave responses to crime-relevant words or pictures presented on a computer screen. Farwell Brain Fingerprinting has proven 100% accurate in over 120 tests, including tests on FBI agents, tests for a US intelligence agency and for the US Navy, and tests on real-life situations including actual crimes.

Brain Fingerprinting catches a serial killer

• On August 5, 1999 Dr. Farwell used Brain Fingerprinting to prove that suspected serial killer James B. Grinder had raped and murdered Julie Helton 15 years earlier. Faced with an almost certain conviction and probable death sentence, Grinder pleaded guilty one week later in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole. He is currently serving that sentence, and has confessed to several other murders of young women.

Brain Fingerprinting exonerates an innocent man falsely convicted of murder

• On April 25, 2000, Dr. Farwell used Brain Fingerprinting to exonerate an innocent man who has spent 22 years in prison for a murder that he did not commit. Terry Harrington was convicted in 1978 of the murder of a retired policeman who was working as a security guard, based primarily on the testimony of an alleged witness who was himself involved in the crime. Harrington was a 17-year-old black youth at the time of the crime.

• Brain Fingerprinting proved that Harrington's brain did not contain details of the crime that would be known to the perpetrator. Brain Fingerprinting proved not only that there was not a match between the information stored in Harrington's brain and the details of the crime, but also that there was a match between the information stored in Harrington's brain and the details of the accounts of the evening of the crime given by several alibi witnesses, who testified that Harrington was elsewhere at the time of the crime.

• Dr. Drew Richardson of the FBI Laboratory (phone 703-632-6704) assisted Dr. Farwell in developing the test for Harrington. Legal efforts to obtain Harrington's freedom based on Brain Fingerprinting and other newly discovered exculpatory evidence are ongoing.

Scientific detection of the record of the crime in the perpetrator’s brain

• Farwell Brain Fingerprinting is based on the principle that the brain is central to all human acts. In a criminal act, there may or may not be many kinds of peripheral evidence, but the brain is always there, planning, executing, and recording the crime. The fundamental difference between a perpetrator and a falsely accused, innocent person is that the perpetrator, having committed the crime, has the details of the crime stored in his brain, and the innocent suspect does not. This is what Farwell Brain Fingerprinting detects scientifically.
  

Matching evidence from a crime scene with evidence on the perpetrator

• Farwell Brain Fingerprinting matches evidence from a crime scene with evidence stored in the brain of the perpetrator, similarly to the way conventional fingerprinting matches fingerprints at the crime scene with the fingers of the perpetrator, and DNA fingerprinting matches biological samples from the crime scene with the DNA in the body of the perpetrator.
  

How Brain Fingerprinting works

• Farwell Brain Fingerprinting works as follows. Words or pictures relevant to a crime are flashed on a computer screen, along with other, irrelevant words or pictures. Electrical brain responses are measured non-invasively through a patented headband equipped with sensors. Dr. Farwell has discovered that a specific brain-wave response called a MERMER (memory and encoding related multifaceted electroencephalographic response) is elicited when the brain processes noteworthy information it recognizes. Thus, when details of the crime that only the perpetrator would know are presented, a MERMER is emitted by the brain of a perpetrator, but not by the brain of an innocent suspect. In Farwell Brain Fingerprinting, a computer analyzes the brain response to detect the MERMER, and thus determines scientifically whether or not the specific crime-relevant information is stored in the brain of the suspect.

Comparison with other technologies

• Conventional fingerprinting and DNA match physical evidence from a crime scene with evidence on the person of the perpetrator. Similarly, Brain Fingerprinting matches informational evidence from the crime scene with evidence stored in the brain. Fingerprints and DNA are available in only 1% of crimes. The brain is always there, planning, executing, and recording the suspect's actions.

• Brain Fingerprinting has nothing to do with lie detection. Rather, it is a scientific way to determine if someone has committed a specific crime or other act. No questions are asked and no answers are given during Farwell Brain Fingerprinting. As with DNA and fingerprints, the results are the same whether the person has lied or told the truth at any time.

Admissibility of Brain Fingerprinting in court

• The admissibility of Brain Fingerprinting in court has not yet been established. The following well established features of Brain Fingerprinting, however, will be relevant when the question of admissibility is tested in court. 1) Brain Fingerprinting has been thoroughly and scientifically tested. 2) The theory and application of Brain Fingerprinting have been subject to peer review and publication. 3) The rate of error is extremely low -- virtually nonexistent -- and clear standards governing scientific techniques of operation of the technology have been established and published. 4) The theory and practice of Brain Fingerprinting have gained general acceptance in the relevant scientific community. 5) Brain Fingerprinting is non-invasive and non-testimonial.

Conclusion

• Brain Fingerprinting is a revolutionary new scientific technology for solving crimes, identifying perpetrators, and exonerating innocent suspects, with a record of 100% accuracy in research with US government agencies, actual criminal cases, and other applications. The technology fulfills an urgent need for governments, law enforcement agencies, corporations, investigators, crime victims, and falsely accused, innocent suspects.