Could a miniaturized radio component ease political debates over the ownership and use of frequencies held by the Pentagon and coveted by telecommunications companies?

For the past three years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been developing high-performance, fingertip-sized filters that can block interference from other devices, allowing systems from radars to handheld radios to operate without interruption or vacating a frequency.

The endearingly named COFFEE Filter program , which is short for Compact Front-end Filters at the Element-level, narrows the emission and reception bands.

“It passes just the wavelength that we want, and it rejects the wavelengths that we don't want,” said Todd Bauer , program manager for DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office.

The

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