Passive Wi-Fi Uses 10,000 Times Less Power Than Standard; Likely to Replace Bluetooth

[dgstorm]

Engineers in the United States have made the final breakthrough for technology called Passive Wi-Fi. It's set to drive the revolution of the IoT (Internet of Things) and replace Bluetooth eventually. Passive Wi-Fi can generate an 11Mbps Wi-Fi connection, and although that doesn't seem very impressive, it does it with 10,000 times less power than standard Wi-Fi connections.

Additionally, the latest successful tests for Passive Wi-Fi had a range of 100 feet (30 meters) and consumed 1,000 times less energy, but with up to 11 times faster speeds than existing low energy standards, like Bluetooth and Zigbee.

Here's a quote with a few more details,

"To achieve such low-power Wi-Fi transmissions, the team essentially decoupled the digital and analog operations involved in radio transmissions.

The Passive Wi-Fi architecture assigns the analog, power-intensive functions - like producing a signal at a specific frequency - to a single device in the network that is plugged into the wall.

An array of sensors produces Wi-Fi packets of information using very little power by simply reflecting and absorbing that signal using a digital switch."

Joshua Smith, associate professor of computer science and engineering had this to say about the breakthrough, "Now that we can achieve Wi-Fi for tens of microwatts of power and can do much better than both Bluetooth and ZigBee, you could now imagine using Wi-Fi for everything."

It's amazing the magical things the wizards of engineering can create! Check out the video in the thread below for a demo of the new Passive Wi-Fi tech.

Source: gadgets.ndtv

 

[dgstorm]

Here's that video of Passive Wi-Fi in action:

 

[FoxKat]

Very exciting development. However one must keep in mind there needs to be one RF transmitter, so replacing bluetooth may not be a completely accurate statement. Within an environment such as a building where the RF WIFI transmitter is on 24/7 makes complete sense. On the other hand being in the open field such as walking down a street I suppose the phone could be the RF transmitter and the headset could be a passive WIFI connection. The only benefit I see there is perhaps smaller headsets due to less need for a battery. On the other hand, multitudes of passive WIFI devices in the home are certainly possible and could provide lots of benefits.

 

[RyanPm40]

Well, wouldn't they just need to replace the Bluetooth transmitter in the phone with a wifi one? I can't see why they wouldn't put the transmitter in the phone?

 

[FoxKat]

Correct, they would need the transmitter in the phone, but the question is just how much of a benefit will it afford with respect to phone to headset communications. As mentioned I suppose the lower power consumption for the headsets and other connected devices is the big benefit, but I just don't feel it's a huge advantage from that perspective. My headset now is so small that I forget I have it in my ear at times. How much smaller do I need it to be? It has 5 hours of talk time and something like 7 days standby. Unless I wanted to wear it 24/7 there's really no need IMHO for it to be able to run longer or be smaller. Just my observation.

In the case of connected devices in the home, this technology certainly affords lots more flexibility. Your clothing could have passive WIFI, and as they said even things such as food dispensers to tell you when they're low and even place them on the shopping list or order online automatically. There's no doubt this is an amazing advancement. I just questioned it from that one perspective - phone and headset.

 

[cr6]

Even though I never use WiFi (except when connecting my FireTV) I'm more interested in LiFi technology coming to fruition.
Li-Fi has just been tested in the real world, and it's 100 times faster than Wi-Fi

 

[kodiak799]

I think it's almost only relevant to "internet of things" home devices.

Wifi power usage on my phone just isn't more than a few % of total battery use on for a full day, and bluetooth is even less.

That's passive usage, mostly. I suppose if you were downloading a ton and watching videos the usage might become significant, but it would have to be a lot because my phone does probably 0.5-1.0GB a day downloading news for offline use.

 

[RyanPm40]

Yeah, I can definitely see why this isn't a huge benefit for headsets, but feel like the battery life improvement on the phone would be worth it.

Wifi power usage on my phone just isn't more than a few % of total battery use on for a full day, and bluetooth is even less.

You're getting worse life with wifi than Bluetooth? Bluetooth has always destroyed my battery in the phones I've owned... more comparable to high-accuracy GPS than wifi battery consumption from my experiences.

 

[kodiak799]

You're getting worse life with wifi than Bluetooth? Bluetooth has always destroyed my battery in the phones I've owned... more comparable to high-accuracy GPS than wifi battery consumption from my experiences.

Passive, yes. Haven't really looked at it after using my BT headphones, but now that you mention it the plane ride drains it quite a bit on a few hours of music.

 

[RyanPm40]

Passive, yes. Haven't really looked at it after using my BT headphones, but now that you mention it the plane ride drains it quite a bit on a few hours of music.

Ahh right, glanced over passive there, I guess I never really noticed! I tend to leave BT off or the most part

 

[Vepaot]

I'm happy for anything that uses less power. For one it means less heat which in turn is insurance for the phone's hardware. Plus the less power we use, the less coal we're burning to charge our devices in the long run. If they could make a phone with an average use time that lasts for two days on one battery, they've cut the amount of power people have to siphon out of the wall, for phones at least, in half. That doesn't seem like much to one person, but when you've got however many billion smart phone users worldwide, it definitely adds up.

 

[mountainbikermark]

Yeah, I can definitely see why this isn't a huge benefit for headsets, but feel like the battery life improvement on the phone would be worth it.



You're getting worse life with wifi than Bluetooth? Bluetooth has always destroyed my battery in the phones I've owned... more comparable to high-accuracy GPS than wifi battery consumption from my experiences.

I keep Bluetooth on all day every day because of a smartwatch. I use it also almost daily for earpieces or headphones. My battery life has dropped maybe 2% per day using Bluetooth this way. BT 3.0 and up have made tremendous strides in battery usage vs 2.0 and below. Wi-Fi uses about 10 times the battery on my Note4 as does Bluetooth but even it isn't all that bad. Using the music player over Bluetooth makes 0 difference vs corded on my Note4 and Note8 but the music player itself kicks off all kinds of battery using things such as Google Play Services, Media, etc.

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[xtor]

Correct, they would need the transmitter in the phone, but the question is just how much of a benefit will it afford with respect to phone to headset communications. As mentioned I suppose the lower power consumption for the headsets and other connected devices is the big benefit, but I just don't feel it's a huge advantage from that perspective. My headset now is so small that I forget I have it in my ear at times. How much smaller do I need it to be? It has 5 hours of talk time and something like 7 days standby. Unless I wanted to wear it 24/7 there's really no need IMHO for it to be able to run longer or be smaller. Just my observation.

In the case of connected devices in the home, this technology certainly affords lots more flexibility. Your clothing could have passive WIFI, and as they said even things such as food dispensers to tell you when they're low and even place them on the shopping list or order online automatically. There's no doubt this is an amazing advancement. I just questioned it from that one perspective - phone and headset.

Foxkat what headset do you have?

DV65

 

[FoxKat]

Motorola boom and jawbone icon and era, as well as a Sennheiser MM 550-X and a MCC Air-Fi.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

[xtor]

Motorola boom and jawbone icon and era, as well as a Sennheiser MM 550-X and a MCC Air-Fi.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

Which one do you use the most? I've had alot of bad luck with Bluetooth headsets. Thanks!

DV65