Nokia Patents Mobile Lightning Sensor

May 29th, 2007

The ad campaign could almost write itself. A couple stands under a threatening sky and the woman holds up her phone — but not to send a text message or call her friends. “You can play music on your cell phone,” the voiceover says somberly, “or take pictures, play games, even make phone calls — and now you can detect lightning.” While that campaign might still be some future fantasy of mobile phone marketing execs, the idea behind it is now owned in a patent by leading cell phone maker Nokia.Measuring the electromagnetic noise created by lightning, new phones from Nokia might someday not only be able to detect lightning, but also be able to determine how far away a recent lightning strike occurred. This would be done by detecting the electromagnetic signal in both the phone’s channel and in another channel, such as FM radio, RFID, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth. Lightning FrequenciesLightning bolts generate frequencies as low as 10 Hz and as high as 5 GHz, with a peak around 500 Hz. The device described in the Nokia patent could actually be any mobile radio-frequency device with “at least two communication channels or frequency bands, whereby at least one of which is normally a telecom channel/frequency range.” Nokia’s patent notes that lightning strikes can actually occur when there are no visible clouds indicating a thunderstorm. While anyone could benefit from any amount of advance knowledge and location of a strike, Nokia said the most benefit could be to outdoor workers whose livelihoods and, often, lives depend on knowing the weather.The patent notes that, on the high end, meteorological and single-band radio-frequency detectors are large and require a specific orientation, making them not well suited for mobile devices. On the low end, Nokia said in the patent, there are existing

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Entry Filed under: Nokia