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

10 URLs to Find Out What Google Knows About You

By
Google is much more than just a search giant. It is also home to many of your favorite products: Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome, just to name a few. Apart from that, it also offers many products to help you  keep track of your data . Most of these are  hidden deep  inside the My Account dashboard, which many users don’t really know of. These hidden tools  may reveal interesting details  about your usage of Google’s many services. We’ve compiled a list of important Google URLs of some  hidden tools  that carry information of what you did with Google, mostly from the searches that you have made on their many products, the voice searches and typed out Google searches that you have made. Are you ready to  find out what how Google knows about you ? 1.  Google Dashboard Google Dashboard offers  transparency and control over the personal data stored with your Google Account. You can  view  and  manage the data gener...
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

Edible water balloons that could get rid of the need for plastic bottles

By
In case you didn’t know, bottled water is destroying the planet. We know that we need to be drinking plenty of water. It’s important. But the plastic bottles they’re sold in are terrible for the environment. One solution is using reusable bottles that you can fill from any nearby taps instead of buying a new bottle each time. Another solution is much more exciting. A group of engineers from Skipping Rocks Lab have developed a wonderful thing called The Ooho!. It’s a globe filled water that you can pop in your mouth whole. The outer shell is made of algae, so it’s edible and biodegradable. Meaning there’s no need for packaging or plastic – the globes of water are self-contained and ready to consume. Exciting, right? Plus they’re wobbly and they look cool, which is always a bonus. The team have now created a crowdfunding page to make their creation available to the public, with goals of selling The Ooho! at festival and marathons within the next 12 m...
Post a Comment
Read more