I'm curious. I think I'm confused because I don't really understand the way ionizing radiation works.
So the Wifi radiation passes through my body, but has no ionizing effects within my body?
Wi-Fi Radiation – Does It Pass Through the Body?
wifi
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Since the window would actually be a near-field coupled antenna element, it would need to be sized to be resonant. The approximate size would be one half wavelength in the long direction, and less than 1/4 wavelength in the short direction, with the orientation being the same as the PCB trace antenna. The size error, as well as other factors like the size of the box and coupling distance from the PCB trace, would determine the radiation pattern and the VSWR. The quality of the cutting of the slot can also affect it (jagged is bad, smooth is good).
An alternative would be to not have a window at all, and place an antenna inside the box at some distance from the box metal surface, and connect it through an SMA connector to the outside, and use another antenna there. Near field coupling inside would pass most of the power through, depending on how the box size behaves as a resonant cavity.
I understand that it's a lot to transmit, but let's focus on how to interface the arduino with the camera
Arduinos are not suited for video streaming at all. Here are some of the reasons:
- At their best, they can only do 20 MIPS
- Don't have nearly enough ram
- They're only an 8bit processor
- The don't come close to having enough bandwidth to stream video
- They have a limited flash memory
- The Arduino programming language is not efficient
For those reasons and more, Arduinos and other 8bit MCU's are not able to accomplish what you want. A 32bit ARM processor would be better suited to the task and still very cheap.
Nevertheless here is your answer
If you MUST use an Arduino, the best you could probably accomplish is streaming jpeg at a slow rate. You can add a TTL camera to an Arduino so the Arduino is able to take a picture (there are camera shields that can connect a camera to an Arduino.) The max baud rate on an Arduino is 115200bps (I think) so after a picture is taken it could be saved to a SD card and/or sent via an wireless SD network shield. There is also a Eye-Fi unit that is a SD card that has a built in wireless network.
Keep in mind that this will not be video streaming, at the best it will be streaming a couple low quality pictures a second.
Remote monitoring using the Eye-Fi wireless SD card and Adafruit Data Logging Shield for Arduino. The Eye-Fi card is a tiny wireless memory card. It stores photos and fits inside a camera just like a regular SD card, but also has built-in WiFi transceiver that can upload images to your computer, smartphone or to various photo-sharing sites. Can the Eye-Fi card work in an Arduino SD card adapter? You bet! Adding a TTL Serial JPEG camera, together with some minimal prep work, we can then create a self-contained wireless monitoring camera with motion-sensing capabilities. HOWTO Make an Internet of Things Camera
This is what I recommend
The easiest way to stream media from a MCU would be to use a MCU that can run an embedded OS, like the Raspberry Pi. Basically the Raspberry Pi is just like a computer running linux with usb ports etc. And it has the processing power and memory to stream video in real time.
So for your project, you should use a USB camera, like a web cam, and a USB wireless networking adapter (since the RP only has wired network by default.) The OS will handle the networking side of things, all you need to do is to stream the USB video to the network and there is plenty of software and tutorials for that.
They even have a OS specifically made for doing this called XBMC. See How to turn your Raspberry Pi into an XBMC media centre. There is a good amount of documentation on how to stream video from a unit like that, take a look at Streaming Your Webcam w/ Raspberry Pi.
For the software, I personally have used Media Tomb (a UPnP MediaServer) and it works very good. So a search for raspberry pi mediatomb streaming video or raspberry pi media server would probably get you set and going.
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Best Answer
Ionizing radiation is a little complicated, so stay with me as I try to explain it in an easy way...
When talking about ionizing radiation, scientists talk about energy levels. But this refers to the energy level of the photon of electro-magnetic energy, not the quantity of photons. All electromagnetic energy (radio waves, light, x-rays, etc.) can be thought of as either a wave or a particle. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the energy. So when scientists talk about the energy level of ionizing radiation they are talking about the wavelength.
Here's a wiki page showing the electromagnetic spectrum.
Only the higher energy waves are ionizing. Specifically, stuff in the UltraViolet and above (X-Rays and Gamma Rays). Stuff in the visible spectrum and below (including radio waves and microwaves) are non-ionizing.
Wifi signals, which are in the 2.4 to 5.something GHz range are not ionizing.
I should point out that if something isn't ionizing then simply having more of it (at the same frequency/wavelength) is not going to make it ionizing. It doesn't work that way.
Non-ionizing radiation can have an effect on your body, however. It can cause heating. A microwave oven, for example, operates near 2.4 GHz and obviously heats up food. But a microwave does not ionize food.
But let's put all of this into perspective. A typical WiFi device can output about 0.1 watts of energy. A typical LED flashlight will output about 1 watt of light. They are both non-ionizing energy and will have a similar heating effect. The main difference is that the flashlight will heat you 10 times faster and in a more concentrated spot on your body. Yet you wouldn't think twice about shining a flashlight on your hand-- and you shouldn't worry about it.
On the equator at noon the sun puts out approximately 1,000 watts of energy per square meter of ground. The vast majority of this is non-ionizing (the UV part is ionizing). This is about 1,000 times more "radiation" than the LED Flashlight, and 10,000 times more than the WiFi signal. You run more risk going outside than sitting in your house playing on the iPad. Even so, just put on some sunscreen and enjoy the outdoors!
Some electro-magnetic radiation will pass through your body. The higher wavelengths and lower wavelengths in particular will pass through more easily. But passing through means that their energy did not interact with your body. It's the stuff that doesn't pass through that you're interested in. Even so, what I said above assumes that 100% of the energy gets trapped in your body and it still isn't an issue.
Conclusion:
A WiFi signal is non-ionizing and is thousands of times less energy than going outside in the sun. Don't worry about it. It's not going to harm you.