Communications of the ACM
Singing Posters and Talking Shirts: Uw Engineers Turn Everyday Objects Into Fm Radio Stations
Researchers at the University of Washington are enabling everyday objects to communicate directly with smartphones and car radios and transmit information to them.
Credit: University of Washington
Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) are enabling everyday objects to communicate directly with smartphones and car radios and transmit information to them.
"The challenge is that radio technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and conventional FM radios would last less than half a day with a coin cell battery when transmitting," says UW's Vikram Iyer. "So we developed a new way of communication where we send information by reflecting ambient FM radio signals that are already in the air, which consumes close to zero power."
The UW team's "backscattering" system sends messages by reflecting and encoding audio and data within outdoor FM radio transmissions without disrupting the original signals.
A demonstration of a "singing poster" is one example of the backscattering system the team implemented. They also are exploring "smart fabric" applications such as sensor-outfitted apparel to monitor vital signs that are sent to a user's phone.
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