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Battery-Free Mobile Devices Draw Power from Ambient Backscatter

University of Washington researchers recently presented a paper at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication 2013 conference in Hong Kong that explains how they have developed a way to communicate wirelessly without obtaining power from a battery or power outlet.

The technique dubbed “ambient backscatter” is a form of power harvesting that takes existing RF waves and turns them into a power source and medium for communication. The technique works by reflecting the signals to exchange information and avoids the inconvenience of maintaining batteries and a dedicated power infrastructure to run other types of low-power communication.

This new technology could lead to new offerings in wearable computing, ubiquitous sensors and self-powered surveillance devices.

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A Dash of Maxwell’s: A Maxwell’s Equations Primer – Part Two

Maxwell’s Equations are eloquently simple yet excruciatingly complex. Their first statement by James Clerk Maxwell in 1864 heralded the beginning of the age of radio and, one could argue, the age of modern electronics.

Read the full paper “Ambient Backscatter: Wireless Communications Out of Thin Air” written by Vincent Liu, Aaron Parks, Vamsi Talla, Shyamnath Gollakota, David Wetherall and Joshua R. Smith.

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