NASA and UCLA have both developed a new WIFI technology that uses 100 times less power than conventional methods.
Wireless communication is now pretty much ingrained in our society. Walk down the street and you will be consistently bombarded with waves from all kinds of communication devices. Our smartphones use it, our laptops use it and even our watches can use it. Most of us leave our WIFI on all the time, constantly polling for a connection. The problem is that it’s a bit of a power hog. The current method for generating a WIFI signal uses a lot of juice, though not quite as much as cellular communication such as 3G/4G. Still, if there’s one highly dependant technology that will benefit us all from power refinement, it’s WIFI.
Diagram of the proposed WIFI chip design
Adrian Tang, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and M.C. Frank Chang, a professor at UCLA, have together developed a WIFI chip that uses a 100 times less power than current receivers. It works by shifting the bulk load over to the router, which typically has its own dedicated power supply. A conventional WIFI receiver on something such as a smartphone device generates its own signal through amplification and beams it off to the router. Tang has developed a technology that doesn’t need amplification from the receiver, as the signal is simply reflected from the WIFI card back to the router. The data from the recipient device is then ‘imprinted’ onto the signal as it is reflected back towards the router.
In testing, transfer rates were faster than most consumer WIFI routers, with speeds of up to 300 MB/s recorded. The only question that remains is if the overall signal range will be impacted as a result. NASA and UCLA are currently in talks to commercialise the product.
