Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are using their bodies to harvest waste energy to power wearable devices.
We may be just beginning to reap the benefits of 5G wireless technology, but researchers around the world are already hard at work for the future of 6G. One of the most promising breakthroughs in 6G communication is the potential for visible light communication (VLC). It’s like a wireless version of fiber optics, which uses flashes of light to transmit information. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have announced that they have invented an innovative, low-cost method of harvesting waste energy from VLCs using the human body as an antenna. This waste energy can be recycled to power an array of wearable devices and possibly larger electronics.
“VLC is very simple and interesting,” said Jie Xiong, professor of information and computer science at UMass Amherst and senior author of the paper. “Instead of using radio signals to transmit information wirelessly, it uses LED lights that can be turned on and off up to a million times per second.” It’s everywhere. Homes, cars, streetlights, and offices are all lit with LED bulbs and may be transmitting data as well. “Smartphones, tablets, laptops, anything with a camera can be a receiver,” he says.
Previously, Xiong and Minhao Cui, first author and UMass Amherst graduate student in information and computer science, found that VLC systems have significant energy “leakage” because LEDs also emit “side-channel RF signals” or radio waves. showed that there is If we can recover this leaked RF energy, we can put it to good use.
The team’s first task was to design an antenna out of coiled copper wire to collect the stray RF. But how can we maximize the collection of energy?
The team experimented with all sorts of design details, from wire thickness to the number of coils, but also found that the efficiency of an antenna depends on what it touches. They tried placing the coils on plastic, cardboard, wood, steel, and touching walls of varying thicknesses, phones that were turned on and off, and laptops. I came up with the idea to see what happens when the coil comes in contact with the human body.
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It soon became apparent that the human body was the perfect medium to amplify the coil’s ability to collect leaked RF energy by up to ten times over the bare coil alone.
After many experiments, the team came up with “Bracelet+”. This is a simple coil of copper wire worn as a bracelet on the top of the forearm. While this design can be worn as a ring, belt, anklet, or necklace, the bracelet seemed to offer the right balance of power harvesting and wearability.
“The design is inexpensive, less than 50 cents,” said the authors. The paper received the prestigious Best Paper Award from the Computing Machinery Society Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems. “However, the Bracelet+ can reach up to microwatts, which many sensors, such as on-body health monitoring sensors, require very little power to operate due to their low sampling frequency and long sleep mode duration. enough to support the
Mr Xiong said:
Original: Next-generation wireless technology could harness the human body as energy
Than: University of Massachusetts Amherst
