Internet of Things (IOT) development without power consumption

Internet of Things (IOT) development without power consumption

Researchers at the University of Washington recently developed a new communication system called Wi-Fi backscatter, which uses radio frequencies as the power source. With the help of this technology, Iot devices may no longer need batteries in the future, but directly obtain energy from the air.

Bryce Kellogg is a PhD student in electronic engineering at the University of Washington and co-author of the Wi-Fi backward scattering thesis. He said the technology has great potential. Traditional Wi-Fi devices consume a lot of power, he said, but the Wi-Fi backward scattering technology can "greatly reduce the dependence on battery, or even completely eliminate the need for battery ".

It is reported that the R & D team of the University of Washington has developed an ultra-low-power label, which has built-in antennas and circuits and can be connected to many electronic devices. This label can communicate with a laptop or smartphone that supports Wi-Fi, and the energy consumed is negligible.

This label can monitor the Wi-Fi signal between the laptop/smartphone and the router, and encode the data by reflecting or not reflecting the Wi-Fi signal of the router, this creates a slight change to the wireless signal. Laptops and smartphones will then detect these small changes and receive data from tags.

Through data exchange during Wi-Fi signal changes, devices such as smart watches can download emails from laptops or smart phones, or send the data that you track (such as exercise data) to these large devices.

These small changes in Wi-Fi signals can be a practical method of data exchange, said Joshua Smith, another co-author. He then added that the research team is currently considering setting up a company to commercialize Wi-Fi backward scattering.

Kellog said that one of the major advantages of Wi-Fi backward scattering is that there are not many restrictions on the types of devices that can be powered. "Because of its low power consumption, the limit is definitely not power," he said. "The biggest limit is the size of the antenna, and the Wi-Fi antenna can be very small. There are several Wi-Fi antennas on your phone )."

On the other end of the backward scattering device chain, Wi-Fi Access Points can collaborate with the technology through software upgrades, Kellogg said. "This means that we can deploy a set of sensors or smart Iot devices without batteries in the house, and then communicate with them through the existing Wi-Fi routers ." "This method breaks a huge obstacle that affects users' adoption of Iot devices," he said ."

The team's backward scattering labels can communicate with Wi-Fi devices at 1 Kbps in a range of 2 meters. In subsequent research and development, the researchers hoped to extend the communication between the two to 20 meters.