If we start to analyze that the Wi-Fi connection is one of the applications that consume our battery of mobile devices the most , we will realize that the cost of electricity we need to charge Those batteries are too high.
Let’s imagine the electricity consumption needed by all the people who are in Spain or in Europe and need to charge their phones daily. We will realize the importance of being able to reduce these expenses, not only for the economic part but also for a topic of preservation of the environment.
Fortunately the “Passive WiFi” technology was born a short time ago with which energy consumption can be drastically reduced. We will show you what this type of technology consists of, what are its advantages and how long it can be working at 100%.
Index:
What is passive Wi-Fi and who developed this technology wireless?
Indian engineer Vamsi Talla is the head of researchers at the University of Washington, located in the North American city of Seattle. These scientists have been studying for 4 years how to reduce considerably the energy consumption that occurs when we connect our devices to the WiFi network .
To do this created Passive WiFi technology with which you can reduce up to ten thousand times the energy expenditure compared to the wireless connections that exist today.
This engineer founded the company Jeeva Wireless that sells this technology to the different suppliers of items we use every day, from a mobile phone to a coffee maker.
Let’s keep in mind that the trend of “Internet of things” (IoT) is getting bigger and closer than ever. Remember that IoT is the technology of applying WiFi sensors to as many objects as possible that exist in a home or in a company.
How does Passive WiFi work? Differences with the conventional
Traditional WiFi works with two devices that need to connect through 2 wave classes , one digital (the one that transmits the data) and an analogue radio ( which is responsible for transporting that data).
One of the devices receives the Internet signal through a wiring, translates it and sends it, thanks to an antenna, by radio waves to the second device, which decodes the signal and translates it.
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It also works in reverse when the second device sends radio wave signals to the wireless router and sends information to the Internet . For these two devices to work, there is a need for a transmitter and a baseband chip.
For passive WiFi, radio waves could be separated, making it only necessary for one of the devices to send the signals through the placement of passive sensors.
That is why it is only necessary that one of the devices has a baseband chip and an antenna. This reduces energy consumption considerably.
In other words, a passive chip must be installed on a mobile phone, for example, and it will connect to the router that has special software installed for this case. Everything else works the same way as traditional WiFi because data transmission is done digitally.
How fast can this type of wireless connections be?
It is estimated that if we connect to a passive WiFi network we can obtain a speed a little higher than 11 Mbps, which is much lower than that of a traditional WiFi network .
While it is true that it is approximately 10 times faster than Bluetooth, it is still a point to consider to improve this technology.
What are the main advantages and disadvantages of this new wireless connection?
As all new technology has its own benefits and also disadvantages that should be analyzed and perfected in the future. Next, we will present what we consider important for our criteria:
Advantages
We will mention the following points or aspects as advantages:
- Efficiency: is one of the strengths of this new technology. With it we can significantly reduce energy consumption.
- Environmental care: By reducing electricity consumption we are also collaborating with our environment not only for energy production but also also for the recycling of batteries and other elements that we would stop using.
- Simple operation: No major changes are needed with the current technology so that passive WiFi can work, just they have to change the software of the routers and chips so that they can connect to each other. That is, we will not need new facilities that are expensive or that take a lot of place, we can simply manage as we have been doing so far.
Disadvantages
If we have to talk about disadvantages we will name the following aspects, that although being a new technology can be perfected without any doubt.
They are:
- Speed is an aspect that should be improved, take advantage of what traditional speed WiFi technology offers.
- It is not applicable to all places, although it is It is true that a technology that is not more than 4 years old is not yet easily accessible, since it can be transmitted up to 30 meters maximum.
- Application time, it will take some time to be able to manage to have this class for the entire system “Internet of things” .
When can we have devices with support for this type of Internet connection via WiFi?
As we mentioned earlier the company Jeeva Wireless, in charge of developing this technology and selling them to different product manufacturers to reach IoT, informs that there are more and more interested in applying this technology, but due to the limitations that Currently, its implementation is not as fast as expected .
Therefore, considering that the production cost is very low , around one dollar, it is estimated that in the next 2 or 3 years we can have this technology applied almost 100% in all our homes and workplaces.