Wireless communication devices without batteries? Research and sustainability, united through light
Summary
IMDEA researchers propose that IoT devices will operate with the energy provided by Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and any other light source, and data provided by modulating these LEDs, a concept called LiFi, and that IoT devices will send data back by reflecting and modulating the RF coming signals already present in the environment, a passive and low-energy transmission technique called RF backscatter. Our solution solves the trade-off between the captured energy required by the IoT device and the desired data rate, allowing our system to operate without using batteries,” says Borja Genovés Guzmán, Post-Doc Researcher at IMDEA Networks and one of the co-authors of the scientific paper. The research (PassiveLiFi: Rethinking LiFi for Low-Power and Long Range RF Backscatter), which has demonstrated that power-constrained IoT devices can reach very long-range transmission without affecting their power consumption, will be presented at the prestigious international conference ACM MobiCom 2021. Representing a transfer of technological knowledge to society and supported by funds of the Community of Madrid, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the European Union, the research has been recently presented to the general public at events such as Science and Innovation Week and the European Researchers’ Night (organized in the Community of Madrid by the madri+d Foundation for Knowledge). As Research Associate Professor at IMDEA Networks, he leads the Pervasive Wireless System Group and continues to participate in European-funded projects such as ENLIGHT’EM, SOMIRO, and LOCUS.