Wi Fi

A new technique that reduces power consumption by five orders of magnitude.

This is the only down side:

Aside from saving battery life on today’s devices, wireless communication that uses almost no power will help enable an “Internet of Things” reality where household devices and wearable sensors can communicate using Wi-Fi without worrying about power.

Just what we need: More devices to become a part of DDOS botnets.

6 thoughts on “Wi Fi”

  1. I’ve long been of the firm belief that, if something does not absolutely need to be connected to the internet, don’t connect it to the internet.

    Likewise, I’ve long been of the firm belief that, if something does not absolutely need to set on fire, don’t set it in fire. Same applies to throwing it out of an airplane, pouring it into your drinking water, etc, etc.

  2. It seems to imply that you need a device that will be constantly transmitting on a wi-fi frequency, and then the ‘low-power’ device will somehow reflect that back. That might make the individual devices low power, but I’m not sure it will save much overall. Or help much with a laptop or cellphone.

    1. Uses the same technology as the EPC electronic product code passive RF tags. You switch a tuned load and it affects the power output of the more powerful transmitter located far away. It’s easier to power the gateway than the small portable (or fixed) IoT devices.

      And not coincidentally Josh Smith (the UW inventor) worked on this technology when he was a grad student at MIT working for the AutoID Center back in the late 90’s. Way to go Josh!

  3. Isn’t that how smoke signals work?

    You have a smoldering fire, which is a substantial consumer of energy. But you modulate the smoke production through manipulation of a blanket, which in comparison requires very little power.

    The data rate, however, is measured in bits per minute though.

    1. I’d have used a heliograph as the example. 😀

      On one side: Tilting a mirror, which could be counter balanced and weaseled into some not easily even quantifiable energy expenditure.

      On the other side… the sun.

  4. To Edward Grant: Correct, overall energy budget won’t change much. But by keeping the energy-consuming bits plugged into the wall, the energy budget of the remote widget will plunge.

    And THAT enables entirely new applications that wouldn’t be possible if the widget needed a battery replacement every year or so. (Batteries are cheap. Replacing batteries is hellishly expensive.)

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