An Ant-Sized Wireless Radio That Operates Without Battery: A Stanford & UC Berkley Innovation

In order to make any electronic device smarter we need internet. This idea gave way to the concept of “Internet of Things” which can be defined as interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing-like devices within the existing Internet infrastructure. In other words every device must be capable of receiving and transmitting information to other devices. They only problem with adding a wireless radio to any device is that it increases the bulk as well as power consumption of a device. Keeping these problems in mind, a Stanford electrical engineering team collaborated with researchers from the University of California to develop a wireless radio antenna that is the size of an ant and operates without any battery. Even with a battery the wireless chip is quite frugal, the team says that a single AAA battery can power it for a hundred years. The wireless chip is powered by the electromagnetic waves that are used to communicate with it. The team highlights another aspect of this wireless radio, which is cost. They say that the chip costs pennies to fabricate and makes it cheap enough to be installed on any gadget.

Wireless Chip

In 2011, Professor Ali Niknejad, director of the Wireless Research Centre at UC Berkeley wanted to rethink the way wireless radios were being miniaturised. While the conventional way involved shrinking the size of components, the team thought of miniaturising all the electronics in a wireless radio. The antenna on the chip is one-tenth the size of a standard Wi-Fi antenna and operates at 24 billion cycles per second. Other components of the wireless chip are a receiving antenna which traps power from electromagnetic waves, a transmitting antenna that broadcast replies and is capable of relaying signals and a central processor to handle all the functions.

A semiconductor company based in France has fabricated a hundred of these prototype wireless chips and the team has successfully tested them. To know more about this innovation, head over to #-Link-Snipped-#, #-Link-Snipped-# and its coverage on This Internet of Things radio is the size of an ant | Ars Technica

Replies

  • Chaitanya Kukde
    Chaitanya Kukde
    While we are on the topic of IoT, it will be interesting to see what ARM has to offer at the ARM TechCon 2014. They have hinted a big announcement via this cryptic video:

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