Skip to main content

Our Batteries are Saved! This Wi-Fi Uses 10,000 Times Less Power

By
TAMING THE HUNGER FOR POWER
Wi-Fi is everywhere in our daily lives, invisibly connecting laptops to printers, allowing smartphones to make calls, stream movies, and letting online gamers battle it out. The downside to this is that connecting to Wi-Fi consumes significant energy resources for devices, and this often leads to drained batteries.




Now, a team of University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers have created a method that would allow the generation of Wi-Fi transmissions at 10,000 times less power compared to conventional methods. Their project, which they dubbed as Passive Wi-Fi, could potentially unseat existing energy-efficient wireless platforms such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee.
“We wanted to see if we could achieve Wi-Fi transmissions using almost no power at all,” said co-author Shyam Gollakota. “That’s basically what Passive Wi-Fi delivers. We can get Wi-Fi for 10,000 times less power than the best thing that’s out there.”
Passive Wi-Fi can transmit Wi-Fi signals at bit rates of up to 11 megabits per second that can be decoded and used on any of the existing billions of devices with Wi-Fi connectivity. While these speeds are lower than the maximum current Wi-Fi standards allow, it is still 11 times higher than the speed available through Bluetooth.




Not only could mainstream adoption of this new development save battery life on today’s devices, it could add to the growing momentum behind the “Internet of Things.” In this reality, household devices and wearable sensors will use Wi-Fi to communicate and act smartly without worrying about details such as power consumption.
 PASSIVE YET ACTIVE




To accomplish this, the team decoupled the digital and analog operations involved in radio transmissions. While the digital operations have long been improving in terms of energy efficiency, analog operations have lagged behind. What Passive Wi-Fi does is transfers these analog, power intensive functions (like signal transmission) to a single device in the network that will be plugged into an outlet.
An array of sensors produces the packets of information needed by Wi-Fi with minimal power by passively reflecting and absorbing the signal emitted by the device. In a trial in real-world communications, the team found that a smartphone was able to maintain communications with passive Wi-Fi sensors at distances of 100 feet or roughly 30 meters.




“All the networking, heavy-lifting and power-consuming pieces are done by the one plugged-in device,” said co-author Vamsi Talla. “The passive devices are only reflecting to generate the Wi-Fi packets, which is a really energy-efficient way to communicate.”
Because the passive sensors are creating actual Wi-Fi packets, this means that they can be used in conjunction with current Wi-Fi devices without any needed modification. These sensors could communicate with routers, smartphones, tablet, or Wi-Fi chipsets in computers.
All of this is accomplished by the passive sensor without need of any specialized equipment.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New record energy efficiency for artificial photosynthesis

By
As the world moves towards developing new avenues of renewable energy, the efficiencies of producing fuels such as hydrogen must increase to the point that they rival or exceed those of conventional energy sources to make them a viable alternative. Now researchers at Monash University in Melbourne claim to have created a solar-powered device that produces hydrogen at a world-record 22 percent efficiency, which is a significant step towards making cheap, efficient hydrogen production a reality. Efficiency records for solar-powered hydrogen production have continued to rise over the years, and much more rapidly as the technology and techniques improve. Even as late as December last year  Gizmag reported  a solar-driven hydrogen record efficiency at the time of just 12.3 percent, so this new record shows a very healthy 10 percent improvement on that and beats out the previous record of 18 percent. Splitting water using electricity to produce hydrogen and oxygen has been a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Japanese skateboard

By
A Japanese engineer just invented a nifty new way to travel: A transporter called a “WalkCar” that’s small, light and apparently easy to use. The product is battery powered and is about the size of a laptop. And although it looks like it can hold much weight and is made from aluminum, it can apparently have as much as 265 lbs on board. VentureBeat  reported  that it can go up to 6.2 miles per hour for up to 7.4 miles. It needs three hours to charge.
Post a Comment
Read more

Wind Turbines

By
The Bahrain World Trade Center is the first skyscraper to have wind turbines integrated into the structure of the building.Three large wind turbines are suspended between two office towers. The towers are aerodynamically tapered to funnel wind and draw air into the turbines. This airfoil tapering allows the wind to enter the turbines at a perpendicular angle and increases air speed as much as 30 percent in each of the 95 ft wide turbine rotors. The turbines supply about 15 percent of the electricity used by the skyscraper - approximately the same amount of electricity used by 300 homes. Source: www.norwin.dk
Post a Comment
Read more