Security and Identification
Since September 2001, security has increased dramatically, and
sports stadiums pose a prime terrorist venue with their large crowds,
political and celebrity visitors. Electronics technology can be found
in surveillance, in CCTV cameras, IP Camera Networks and Data
Information Security. In managing these large crowds, sophisticated
access control systems are essential, and today’s biometric, voice
recognition and RFID technology makes this possible. In moving all the
equipment around these stadiums in a safe and secure way, new asset
tracking products are indeed an asset, included in which you will find
alarm systems detecting any anomaly not previously recorded.
The products involved in these systems are typically processor
based, particularly DSP. However, many processors are utilized in
security design, usually 32-bit. Today’s advances in both ARM and MIPS
RISC architecture allows an abundance of inexpensive, yet versatile
chips. So too has sensing advanced, and camera chip technology with
it. Indeed sensor technology as a whole has increased, with MEMS
sensors coming to the fore in many current designs.
Medical
Athletes today have to undergo rigorous drug testing to ensure a
level playing field amongst competitors. Many of the products used to
quickly analyse the athletes’ blood are almost always electronic in
nature, using miniaturised spectrometry techniques. During training,
the athlete’s performance is closely monitored to ensure maximum
efficiency in both training and competing. The Paraolympic Games is
now held alongside the Olympic Games, and artificial limbs now use the
very latest robotic technology and materials. Unfortunately, at these
intense levels of competitiveness, there are accidents and injuries do
occur. On site defibrillators are a good example of where technology
can be used to save lives.
The components used in Medical applications are vast, but there are a
few that are purpose built for this sub-industry such as bio-gas
sensors and high resolution analogue-to-digital converters.
Instrumentation Most Olympic races are timed to the thousandth of a
second. In track events, the timer is set off by the starter's gun and
stopped by a laser at the finish. A high-speed camera at the line takes
2,000 images per second to help determine the winner if the race is
close. Swimming events are timed by contact plates that determine when a
swimmer leaves her mark and when she touches the wall to end the
race. During training, equipment such as exercise bikes and treadmills
often have highly advanced electronics to vary the activity based on a
complex variety of inputs. The technology used to train national
athletes very often has broad stream appeal in everyday gyms, an
ever-increasing past time of choice as the world becomes more aware of
diet and exercise.
Lighting
The newest techniques and performance innovations can help maximize
lighting systems and reduce energy consumption. This is true for
illumination and applications for advertising and video multimedia. For
the Beijing Olympics, Ministry of Science and Technology seized the
opportunity to promote solid-state lighting technology in 21 pioneer
cities and planned to install 6 million LED lights for functional and
landscape lighting. In remote rural and pasturing areas, the so-called
“golden sun” project focused mainly on solar energy lighting technology
used in Beijing Olympics. Cree, an LED company, provided about 440,000
LEDs for the Water Cube structure at the Beijing Olympics. Example of
uses include digital signage, track lighting, merchandise and
fixtures, fitting and of course lighting itself.
As well as the obvious LEDs, as given in the example of Cree, many
LEDs are pre-mounted onto heat sinks, commonly known as Light Engines
or Modules. Indeed many applications have purpose-made Lighting
Systems. There are also many lighting-specific components that support
these LED designs such as thermal management products, backlighting,
filters, colour control ICs, displays and interconnect products.
Multimedia
Entertainment is mainstream and, with the advent of the internet,
now accessible in millions of new applications. Historically these
products would have been labelled broadcast or AV, but with so many
diverse uses of these products, applications are now taking advantage
of this pervasive technology, for example Imaging, Mixed Signal, Audio
systems.
The main example from a product perspective is derived from the
signal chain or path, from input devices such as sensors, to
amplifiers, filters and multiplexers, to mixed signal components such
as tuners and CODECs, to image processing chips, to displays utilizing
new OLED technology, to Interconnect using new multimedia standards
such as HDMI.
Communications
Communications concerns the transmission of digitally encoded
messages between devices. It can be broadly classified into traditional
voice telephone connections, local area networking, wireless
communications ranging from cellular to satellite systems. Perhaps not
strictly sport specific, it is clear that any large sport facility
will need sophisticated communication networks to transmit the events
and information regarding as fast, secure and complete as possible.
Products used in communications are often application specific
depending on the frequency and protocol of the technology used. But
almost all come in modular form, supported by and including processors,
transceivers, routers, hubs, servers, storage devices, KVM switches,
2-way radios and modems.
Infrastructure
The Beijing Meteorological Bureau purchased one of the ten most
powerful supercomputers in the world from IBM to help predict weather
and pollution levels for all events in and around Beijing. The Chinese
are also adept at controlling the weather. The Beijing Weather
Modification Office (seriously) fires cloud seeding material into
oncoming rain clouds with anti-aircraft guns, draining the
precipitation before it can cause problems.
This and other innovative solutions will involve many components,
both board-mounted and stand-alone. Products such as generators,
meters, tools, cables, computers, TV, Servers, Storage, Ticketing
machines, kiosks, elevators and escalators to name a few, will all
feature in some shape or form.
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