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Currently, state-of-the-art backscatter modulation requires two external devices to transmit and receive and read the signals. This conference paper presents the first backscatter integrated circuit enabling wireless communication and battery-less operation from a single mobile device.
“This approach enables a robust, low-cost, and scalable way to provide power and enable communications in an RFID-like manner while using smartphones as the devices that both read and power the signals,” said Patrick Mercier, one of the paper’s senior authors and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego.
The technology’s broader promise is the development of devices that do not need batteries because they can harvest power from LTE signals instead. This, in turn, would lead to significantly less expensive devices that last longer, up to several decades, said Dinesh Bharadia, a professor in the UC San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and one of the paper’s senior authors.
“E-waste, especially batteries, is one of the biggest problems the planet is facing after climate change,” Bharadia said.
Table of Contents
How it works
The researchers achieved this breakthrough by harvesting power from LTE smartphone signals and buffering this power onto an energy storage capacitor. This in turn activates a receiver that detects Bluetooth signals, which are then modified into reflected WiFi signals.
The software update is simply a bit sequence that turns the Bluetooth signal into something that can be more easily turned into a WiFi signal.
In addition, most lower-power wireless communications require custom protocols, but the device the researchers developed relies on common communication protocols: Bluetooth, WiFi and LTE. That’s because smartphones are equipped with Bluetooth transmitters and WiFi receivers.
The device has a range of one meter–about one yard. Adding a battery would boost the tag’s range to tens of meters and increase costs. The device, which is half a square inch, costs just a few cents to manufacture.
Next steps
Next steps include integrating the technology in other research projects to demonstrate its capabilities.
The team also hopes to commercialize the device through a startup or an industry partner.
Source: UCSD
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