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YOU DON’T NOTICE it but your devices are always searching for WiFi to connect to in the background.
This is great for when you’re in need of a connection but it puts a serious strain on your smartphone’s battery as well as other devices.
Now a team of researchers from the University of Washington have developed a way to reduce the energy needed to search for this.
Calling it Passive WiFi, it consumes 1/10,000th the energy current methods use, but can keep a range of 100 feet and offers transfer speeds of up to 11 megabits per second. The low energy output means it consumes 1,000 times less energy than similar methods like Bluetooth Low Energy.
How it manages to use almost no energy is down to a single device. WiFi (and radio transmissions) require both an analogue and digital system. Over the years, the digital part has become more energy efficient while the analogue part hasn’t.
So the researchers separated the two and turned the analogue part into its own plugged-in device.
It sends waves to special passive WiFi sensors which requires no energy to run. They then reflect the waves to other devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
This method would make it more efficient and faster and ensures that other devices wouldn’t need a battery to connect.
The development could also mean that more smart items like sensors can be manufactured and installed since they would no longer require a battery to work.
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Or simply turn off your Wi-Fi and mobile data until you need to use it. My battery lasts days!
Shhhhhhhh Eugene. Don’t go using cracking pot, common sense. Just because you can get up to 60 hours battery life. This is the Journal.ie . That kind of thing is frowned on.
Not much use of I want to receive emails or precious precious Facebook updates
Batteries will soon be obsolete when we ourselves, become actual smartphones/iPhones.
Bipolar Magnetic Reverse Theory.
This is why I stick to Samsung, iPhone is shocking
Comment makes No sense.
Laws of physics apply to all phones.
That’s why I’m sticking to iPhone. Samsung makes no sense.
So it’s basically a mirror…?
I think he’s saying it has a process that compresses the wifi data and the other ‘passive device’ must be just a range extender.
have your say