IoT applications get new powering system

The Internet of Things (IoT) assembles objects that have the capability to exchange data via internet. IoT devices range to varieties right from basic household appliances to industrial and scientific devices.

These devices consist of sensors, chips and software that should always remain in communication with other devices, batteries may not be the best source for these devices for power. So, there is research across the world to combine remote communication technology with remote powering options to overcome the problem.

Right now the two options are Radio frequency energy harvesting (RF-EH) and backscatter communication. In case of RF-EH, device will get energy via radio waves by a dedicated transmitter and  backscatter communication also follows the same process but not necessarily with a dedicated transmitter.

In a new study, a team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Mandi has leveraged the complementary nature of both the technologies to develop an effective solution.

“We used a dedicated power transmitter for the two devices, in which the backscatter device transferred information through a monostatic configuration and the RFEH device through the HTT protocol. The team used extensive numerical simulations to analyze the performance of the model,” said team leader and Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Electrical Engineering at the Institute, Siddhartha Sarma.