Wi-Fi transmission with 10,000x lower power usage demonstrated

[HEXUS]

Passive Wi-Fi tech also easily trounces Bluetooth LE and Zigbee for power thriftiness.

Read more.

[scaryjim]

Sounds to me like they need to talk to the graphene researchers at UoM for a bit of synergistic work: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/graphene-antenna-could-deliver-cheap-flexible-sensors/

[ik9000]

The recent developments in this project, shown in the video above, should help facilitate a greater Internet of Things (IoT)

Not that all of us want a greater IoT. Better mobile battery life sure. My toaster uploading its usage statistics? No thanks.

[lumireleon]

whats the battery life of the Passive Wi-Fi transmitters?

[scaryjim]

... Better mobile battery life sure. ...

Reading up on the technology it's not likely to do a huge amount for your mobile - at least not in the forseeable future - which is likely to still include active WiFi to ensure good connections at high speeds even when considerable distances from the transmitter/receiver bases.

The whole area of Ambient Backscatter is very interesting - it's basically an extension/modification of the way RFID (which backscatters a dedicated RF transmitter) works, but using - unsurpringly - ambient RF signals like TV/Radio/Active WiFi to both generate power and transmit data (by reflection/modulation of the ambient signal). Well worth reading up on (IMNSHO ).

[Meat_PoPsiclez]

... Better mobile battery life sure. ...

Reading up on the technology it's not likely to do a huge amount for your mobile - at least not in the forseeable future - which is likely to still include active WiFi to ensure good connections at high speeds even when considerable distances from the transmitter/receiver bases.

My vision of mobile application of this tech would be a seamless handover from the backscatter to active radio, allowing backscatter listen, then transfer to active when data is being transmitted or received. To optimize for this some qos shaping, and background service scheduling for delayed transmission could be used to ensure that once the active radio was fired up, a large burst of data could be transmitted before going quiet again.

[watercooled]

My vision of mobile application of this tech would be a seamless handover from the backscatter to active radio, allowing backscatter listen, then transfer to active when data is being transmitted or received. To optimize for this some qos shaping, and background service scheduling for delayed transmission could be used to ensure that once the active radio was fired up, a large burst of data could be transmitted before going quiet again.

Unless I misunderstand what you mean, you don't need anything fancy for low power listening anyway, and mobiles have been doing that for decades - constantly listening to a lower complexity control channel. It's how you can get weeks of battery life if you leave a basic mobile phone in standby.

WRT the article, I must say I'll be reserving enthusiasm until I see it demonstrated especially given the bitrates and distances they're claiming (let alone its WiFi compliance). It's one thing being able to receive and have a modem running at very low power, but they need to be able to output a signal with enough power for a receiver a good distance away to be able to interpret it reliably. And as they don't have a dedicated power source like RFID, they're relying on a potentially intermittent supply depending on the environment.