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Battery-Free IoT: These Tiny Printable Computers Harvest Energy From Radio Waves


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The Wiliot battery-free Internet of Things chip.

The printable Wiliot Internet of Things tag incorporates random-access memory, read-only memory, onboard sensors, certified Bluetooth, an ARM central-processing unit, Flash memory, and secure communications.

Credit: Wiliot

The Wiliot Internet of Things (IoT) tag is a printable chip with random-access memory, read-only memory, onboard sensors, certified Bluetooth, an ARM central-processing unit, flash memory, and secure communications.

The chip, made by fabless semiconductor company Wiliot, is battery-free, harvesting energy from ambient radio waves; it can be glued onto antennas, with input supplied from sensors for temperature or motion or even chemical changes, and output in encrypted Bluetooth-based communications.

Without a battery, the device is smaller, more environmentally friendly, and less expensive.

The tag is expected to cost just pennies eventually, but Wiliot's Stephen Statler said the real advance is lowering the cost of sensing infrastructure, which is critical to realizing a ubiquitous IoT.

From Forbes
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