Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 20 September 2013

A weekly round-up of critical communications and public safety radio news from around the internet for Friday, 20 September 2013.

Breaker, breaker, broke the law. A South Australian man has been charged with five offences related to improper use of CB radio equipment. The charges come following an investigation by ACMA into “allegations of abuse and harassment by the defendant while using a Citizen Band Radio Service (CBRS) in the Adelaide area".

1000X Challenge. A white paper put out by Facebook and Qualcomm details what the companies see as the major challenges ahead for the internet and communications world. In particular, Qualcomm sketches what it calls the '1000X Challenge' - a reference to estimates that, 10 years from now, there'll be 1000 times as much information traffic as there is today. The company says carrier aggregation, supplemental downlink, LTE-Broadcast and LTE-Direct are all essential ingredients to meet the challenge.

NASA hearts radar. NASA and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will next week demonstrate a radar system that can detect the heartbeats of people trapped in wreckage, such as that of a building collapse. Known as the Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response (FINDER), it can locate individuals buried under as much as 10 metres of crushed materials, behind seven metres of solid concrete or from a distance of 30 metres in open spaces.

Mine safety. Electronic equipment used in underground mines must be prevented from producing sparks that could ignite gases and dust. This presents a problem for screen-based devices - glass screens can too easily crack, while plastic screens can build up a dangerous static charge. Researchers have turned to a special indium-tin oxide coating once used on Soviet-era spy satellite cameras to prevent the static build-up