Michael Koziol

Apr 24, 2024 | spectrum.ieee.org | Michael Koziol

At some point, our phone habits changed. It used to be that if the phone rang, you answered it. With the advent of caller ID, you’d only pick up if it was someone you recognized. And now, with spoofing and robocalls, it can seem like a gamble to pick up the phone, period. In 2023, robocall blocking service Youmail estimates there were more than 55 billion robocalls in the United States. How did robocalls proliferate so much that now they seem to be dominating phone networks?

Mar 25, 2024 | spectrum.ieee.org | Michael Koziol

Starting a new engineering program at a university is no simple task. But that’s just what Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is doing. By 2026, the university will offer an undergraduate engineering degree—but without creating an engineering department.

Mar 22, 2024 | spectrum.ieee.org | Michael Koziol

Smartphones have a scaling problem. Specifically, the radiofrequency (RF) filters that every phone—and every wireless device in general—uses to extract information from isolated wireless signals are too big, too flat, and too numerous. And without these filters, wireless communications simply wouldn’t work at all. “They are literally the entire backbone of wireless systems,” says Roozbeh Tabrizian, a researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Feb 27, 2024 | spectrum.ieee.org | Michael Koziol

Wireless spectrum is always at a premium—if you’ve ever tried to connect to Wi-Fi in a crowded airport or stadium, you know the pain that comes from crowded spectrum use. That’s why the industry continues to tinker with ways to get the most out of available spectrum. The latest example: Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7900 chip, which the company unveiled Monday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Jan 30, 2024 | spectrum.ieee.org | Michael Koziol

The rising popularity of artificial intelligence has impacted the entire world, including the tiny island of Anguilla. Located in the Caribbean, the country, home to about 15,000 people, has a unique and suddenly in-demand resource. In the late 1980s, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigned countries and regions of geographic interest their own two-letter domains.