Internet of Things tagged posts

Efficient Power Converter for Internet of Things

Researchers from MIT’s Microsystems Technologies Laboratories (MTL) have designed a new power converter that maintains its efficiency at currents ranging from 100 picoamps to 1 milliamp, a span that encompasses a millionfold increase in current levels.

Researchers from MIT’s Microsystems Technologies Laboratories (MTL) have designed a new power converter that maintains its efficiency at currents ranging from 100 picoamps to 1 milliamp, a span that encompasses a millionfold increase in current levels.

Design reduces converter’s resting power consumption by 50%. The “internet of things”, IoT is the idea that vehicles, appliances, civil structures, manufacturing equipment, and even livestock will soon have sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks. Those sensors will have to operate at very low powers, in order to extend battery life for months or make do with energy harvested from the environment...

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Harnessing Solar and Wind Energy in One Device could Power the ‘Internet of Things’

Hybrid solar and wind harvesting cells on the top of this model house collect enough energy to light it up inside. Credit: American Chemical Society

Hybrid solar and wind harvesting cells on the top of this model house collect enough energy to light it up inside. Credit: American Chemical Society

The “Internet of Things” could make cities “smarter” by connecting an extensive network of tiny communications devices to make life more efficient. But all these machines will require a lot of energy. Rather than adding to the global reliance on fossil fuels to power the network, researchers report on a single device that harvests wind and solar energy appears in the journal ACS Nano.

hybridized nanogenerator, including a solar cell (SC) and a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), that can individually/simultaneously scavenge solar and wind energies, which can be extensively installed on the roofs of the city buildings. Under the same device area of about 120 mm × 22 mm, the SC can deliver a largest output power of about 8 mW, while the output power of the TENG can be up to 26 mW. Impedance matching between the SC and TENG has been achieved by using a transformer to decrease the impedance of the TENG. The hybridized nanogenerator has a larger output current and a better charging performance than that of the individual SC or TENG. This research presents a feasible approach to maximize solar and wind energies scavenging from the city environments with the aim to realize some self-powered functions in smart city.

Hybridized nanogenerator, including a solar cell (SC) and a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), that can individually/simultaneously scavenge solar and wind energies, which can be extensively installed on the roofs of the city buildings...

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Wi-Fi achieved at 10,000 times Lower Power

In Passive Wi-Fi, power-intensive functions are handled by a single device plugged into the wall. Passive sensors use almost no energy to communicate with routers, phones and other devices.

In Passive Wi-Fi, power-intensive functions are handled by a single device plugged into the wall. Passive sensors use almost no energy to communicate with routers, phones and other devices.Stock images courtesy of vector.me

With ‘Passive Wi-Fi,’ signals can be transmitted at rates up to 11 megabits/s – rates that are lower than maximum Wi-Fi speeds but are 11 times faster than Bluetooth – and decoded on any of the billions of devices with Wi-Fi connectivity. The new Passive Wi-Fi system also consumes 1,000 times less power than existing energy-efficient wireless communication platforms, such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee.

The technology has also been named one of the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2016 by MIT Technology Review...

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Chip Could bring Deep Learning to Mobile Devices

MIT researchers have designed a new chip to implement neural networks. It is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing. Credit: MIT News

MIT researchers have designed a new chip to implement neural networks. It is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing. Credit: MIT News

Advance could enable mobile devices to implement ‘neural networks’ modeled on the human brain. It is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing.

Neural networks are typically implemented using graphics processing units (GPUs), special-purpose graphics chips found in all computing devices with screens...

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