If there is one thing that modern day devices have to be worried about, it would be this – the issue of power, or rather, the lack of it during the most crucial of moments as Murphy’s Law kicks in. Engineers over at Washington University are currently developing a new technology that is known as “Wi-Fi backscatter”, where all that is required would be a signal from a router in order to power up and communicate.
With the advent of Wi-Fi backscatter devices, they would be able to communicate through the alteration of the signal that moves from routers to other devices, just like on a notebook. It is basically harnessing the energy generated by all of the data that is being transferred in an invisible manner around you, where success with this development would allow smaller devices with a lower power requirement to be powered, in addition to helping them remain connected to the signal – and indirectly, the Internet.
In a nutshell, Wi-Fi backscatter technology enables a device to connect battery-free devices to Wi-Fi infrastructure. The implication of such technology can be far reaching if it can be harnessed properly, and could revolutionize the way smaller devices work in the future. [Press Release]