New Chip Brings Ultra-Low Power Wi-Fi Connectivity to IoT Devices

This could unleash smaller, fully wireless IoT setups,” said UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering professor Patrick Mercier, who co-led the work with Bharadia.Think a portable Google Home device that you can take around the house and can last for years instead of just hours when unplugged.“It could also allow you to connect devices that are not currently connected—things that cannot meet the power demands of current Wi-Fi radios, like a smoke alarm—and not have a huge burden on battery replacement,” Mercier said.The Wi-Fi radio runs on extremely low power by transmitting data via a technique called backscattering. This “wakes up” the Wi-Fi radio only when it needs to communicate with Wi-Fi signals, so it can stay in low-power sleep mode the rest of the time, during which it consumes only 3 microwatts of power.Bharadia (center), with graduate student researchers Rohit Kumar (left) and Manideep Dunna (right), displaying a setup in which the Wi-Fi radio would be backscattering between two Wi-Fi compatible devices.The UC San Diego team’s improvements to the technology also feature a custom integrated circuit for backscattering data, which makes the whole system smaller and more efficient, and thus enables their Wi-Fi radio to operate over longer communication range (21 meters).