Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have designed a system that uses radio signals as a power source to low-power devices and existing wi-fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to these devices.
Called wi-fi backscatter, the technology developed by University of Washington engineers.
“If Internet of Things devices are going to take off, we must provide connectivity to the potentially billions of battery-free devices that will be embedded in everyday objects,” said Shyam Gollakota, a UW assistant professor.
The work builds upon previous research that showed how low-powered devices such as temperature sensors or wearable technology could run without batteries by harnessing energy from radio, TV and wireless signals.
This work takes that a step further by connecting each individual device to the Internet, which previously wasn’t possible.
They encode data by either reflecting or not reflecting a wi-fi router’s signals, slightly changing the wireless signal which can be detected by laptops and smartphones.
