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UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

washington.edu

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Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#51

Post by HammondSmoking »

MrBra wrote: post #41

I invented a coffee machine which works using 10000 times less power: it works by deferring the actual coffee making to another machine you plug into another wall socket.

Your analogy is flawed: let me fix it for you. "I invented a battery powered coffee machine which works using 10000 times less power: it works by deferring the actual coffee making to another machine you plug into a wall socket. Now you can stop worrying about recharging the battery on the first coffee machine, and still enjoy your coffee just like before!"

With WiFi, the advantage is that battery powered devices like your smartphone will consume less energy. Sure, your router will draw more power from the wall socket, but you are effectively reducing power consumption where you actually are using WiFi the most, mobile devices that run on batteries.

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#52

Post by ice3 »

mkagenius wrote: post #25
ajhc112 wrote: post #12

This article is a few months old. The technology is now being commercialized by the same authors, as Jeeva Wireless: http://www.jeevawireless.com/

In case someone is wondering 'Jeeva' (pronounced as Jeev) means living thing in Hindi.

Живой ( jee-voi ) is also a Russian word that means alive. Or in case of Жива ( jee-va ) it is a feminine gender of the present tense.

Gyvas ( Gee-vas ) is the same cognate in Lithuanian. And same as in Russian, Gyva is the feminine gender of the same word.

The root of the word comes down to us all the way from PIE

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_language [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#53

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jasoncchild wrote: post #31
Namrog84 wrote: post #2

10,000 times lower power, but achieving speeds up to 11Mbps Being named passive wifi. Quite neat and could be useful for IoT considering also approx 100 ft distance

100' is a very low distance for real IoT applications I've run across

It'd be enough to achieve significant power reduction for the <100ft region though; pretty sure wifi modules would be able to support both passive and active modes depending on availability.

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#54

Post by mirages »

HammondSmoking wrote: post #51
MrBra wrote: post #41

I invented a coffee machine which works using 10000 times less power: it works by deferring the actual coffee making to another machine you plug into another wall socket.

Your analogy is flawed: let me fix it for you. "I invented a battery powered coffee machine which works using 10000 times less power: it works by deferring the actual coffee making to another machine you plug into a wall socket. Now you can stop worrying about recharging the battery on the first coffee machine, and still enjoy your coffee just like before!" With WiFi, the advantage is that battery powered devices lik…

Ty for the analogy, wasn't sure if I really figured what they were saying in the paper

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#55

Post by akerro »

jasoncchild wrote: post #31
Namrog84 wrote: post #2

10,000 times lower power, but achieving speeds up to 11Mbps Being named passive wifi. Quite neat and could be useful for IoT considering also approx 100 ft distance

100' is a very low distance for real IoT applications I've run across

but 30m is way longer than I need for my IoT. It also makes my devices more secure from various attacks on my network, as less people can see it.

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#56

Post by wbl »

paulddraper wrote: post #32
ClassyJacket wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5Mbps is an interesting definition of HD...

Naturally it depends on compression, bandwidth variability, etc. It's what Netflix recommends, and they have zero incentive to lowball that. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 The biggest issue is that people think they're getting 20mbps but they're lucky if they get 8. And that not a technology problem.

Yes it is. RF does not go in nice straight lines. The noise floor has been steadily rising, making getting a good signal harder and harder and leading to more packet loss. Add to that the fact that most TCP implementations don't deal well with lossy channels like WIFI, and you get a problem.

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#57

Post by ryao »

sgentle wrote: post #22

I wonder if you could use this technique to make a completely passive wi-fi device. Ie, no battery or plug of any kind, just using the power of the wifi emitter. I guess it would be similar to passive NFC, but at a longer range and driven by a separate device from the one that does the receiving. Or would the power requirements be too high? Edit: I just realised that the earlier prototype video from the comments indi…

I doubt that a microprocessor will be able to operate solely off ambient RF, but I could see a low power microprocessor being combined with this and a betavoltiac for impressively long life. Using this with the new diamond battery that they have in the labs at the university of Bristol would enable the creation of wireless devices that last over 5000 years.

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#58

Post by ryao »

jasoncchild wrote: post #31
Namrog84 wrote: post #2

10,000 times lower power, but achieving speeds up to 11Mbps Being named passive wifi. Quite neat and could be useful for IoT considering also approx 100 ft distance

100' is a very low distance for real IoT applications I've run across

A directional antenna at the active wifi radio would enable longer range. One interesting application would be the ability to dogleg a wireless connection between points A and B where there is no LoS to each other, but both have LoS with point C. It would be a low throughput link, but it would allow for an awesome implementation of a private two way communications system. I.e. Several miles without direct LoS between the two end points.

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#59

Post by paulmd »

MrBra wrote: post #41

I invented a coffee machine which works using 10000 times less power: it works by deferring the actual coffee making to another machine you plug into another wall socket.

It's funny when you put it like that, but that's how coffee was made for a long, long time. No electricity is actually needed, just a source of heat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_percolator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_coffee_maker

Re: UW engineers achieve Wi-Fi at 10,000 times lower power

#60

Post by plussed_reader »

y04nn wrote: post #50
sleepingeights wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive RFID is powered by the incoming radio waves that is 1000x stronger than the signal transmission energy from the RFID tag. There is no statement to the power requirement for passive WIFI from an active WIFI power source. The active WIFI transmitter may require outputting radio waves many times more powerful in order to receive a signal transmission from the passive wifi device. edit: For that reason, I'm not t…

The maximum transmitting power is regulated. In the article they state that it can use some kind of crafted wifi packet to be compatible with any existing devices. Edit: After looking at the pater, it seems that I may have misunderstood the article, it needs a plugged RF carrier tone generator at at fixed frequency.

Imagine coming up with the frequency scheme in an apartment situation; if the building were running the network it would be one thing, but I would expect individual units to foster their own connection.
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