Renesas Electronics Corp Wireless Chips Can Work Without Batteries

A new way of working for wireless communication modules was found by Renesas Electronics. Bluetooth and WiFi communication modules created using this technology can work without rechargeable batteries. The idea, in general, is not new, such chips receive energy from radio waves with which the space surrounding us is filled. Chips convert the radio signal into electricity, and thus provide themselves with the necessary energy. The development details, unfortunately, are not yet known, but this data should have been presented at VLSI Circuits 2011 .

Since the technology does not need batteries, wireless chips can be very small. For example, they can be used for medical purposes by attaching a chip to a patch measuring body temperature and sending this data to a smartphone. So, for example, you can monitor the temperature of the child’s body, receiving the necessary information constantly.

You can also think of something else, for example, releasing movie posters with such a chip that would transmit data to communicators and phones of people passing by, including the date the film was shown and the main data. In general, you can come up with a lot of things about this.

Conventional wireless modules in active mode consume several tens of milliwatts. The new technology allows to reduce this indicator to several microwatts. By the way, the size of the chip reaches a couple of hundred microns, so it is really very small. The developers have already conducted a demonstration of the chip, the tests were successful.

Via nikkeibp